Dragon's Bait (3 page)

She felt the wind of its wings as it passed overhead, circling, perhaps suspecting a trap. Then it settled to the ground before her. She braced herself ... braced herself ... braced...

She opened her eyes just the tiniest bit, sure
that what she'd see would be her last sight: a tongue of flame about to engulf her, or great slathery jaws opened wide to tear her, or sharp claws about to rake the life out of her.

What she saw was the dragon's kneecap.

Momentarily she reclosed her eyes. She had expected the creature to tower over her; she just hadn't realized that it would tower over her even before its legs ended.

She swallowed and opened her eyes again. She tipped her head back, back, back.

The dragon watched her from that impossible height.

"Well, kill me," she whispered.

Still the dragon just stood there, pale in the light of the moon and torches, its wispy mane fluttering in the soft breeze, its eyes too far up for Alys to see more than a dark hint. It didn't smell of sulfur, which was something the balladeers almost always said, or of blood or carrion, which was something else she'd expected. More like damp meadow grass on a spring day.

Alys thought back to this past winter when so many people had gotten sick, which made her think of her father, who had survived, which
made her think of him collapsing in Gower's storeroom, his hand to his chest. She kicked the dragon, hard.

The impact made her toes sting.

The dragon tipped its head slightly to one side as though considering. Something.

So, this wasn't going to be quick after all: The dragon was going to play with her. She should have chosen the wolves while she'd had the chance. But, from some unexpected place within, a giggle bubbled up. "Now, dear," she said, "don't play with your food." She covered her face with her hands and sank to the ground. She had so wanted to be brave, even if she was the only one who'd know it, and here she was laughing and sobbing at the same time, facing her death with her rear end in the mud after all.

With her eyes scrunched closed behind her hands, she was aware of the dragon moving.
This is it
, she thought. But still she jumped as something brushed her hand.
I'm sorry
, she thought desperately to God, not for being a witch, which they both knew she wasn't, but for anything else—she was too scared to think of specifics—the impatiences, the missed opportunities to go out of her way to be kind, the times
she'd daydreamed during Mass, the ... the ... what? Her mind shut down, refusing to come up with anything. And what was this stupid dragon doing?

Just as she was trying to get up the courage to open her eyes, she realized that hands were pulling at her hands, uncovering her face.

Hands—not claws.

Alys gasped, opening her eyes and dropping her hands all at the same moment.

A young man, looking maybe two years older than she, crouched before her, his hands still on hers even now as they rested in her lap.

There was no sign of the dragon.

For the briefest moment she wondered if he were some sort of dragon-slaying prince who'd killed—No, there'd been no time for that—who'd frightened away ... But there'd been no sound ...

She looked again, and didn't know how she could have ever mistaken him, however briefly, for human.

The thing that was most obviously wrong were the eyes. And she thought that before she even noticed the color, which was that of the amethyst gem in the crucifix Inquisitor Atherton
wore. "
It's a small dragon
, "Alys recalled Atherton saying. No wonder. If this human manifestation was any indication, the dragon wasn't fully adult yet. It gave her a perverse pleasure to think of the villagers of Saint Toby's having to contend with him when he reached his full size. Even if she wouldn't be alive to see it.

By the light of the torches she saw that his hair was the color the mane had been, palest gold, and it hung almost to his waist. Alys jerked her gaze back up to the face, for she had suddenly—finally—noticed that he wore no clothes.

For the first time, the purple eyes flickered with emotion: amusement. He had seen her discomfort, and recognized the cause.

"I didn't know," she said, to say anything, and looked away and simultaneously tried to pull her hands from his, "that dragons could take on human shape." She was surprised that her voice worked. His hands felt like human hands—the texture, the warmth, everything was just as it should be, but...

He refused to release her hands until she looked at him again. He smiled, but this time the amusement didn't reach his eyes. "It's not
often," he said in a voice that was soft and husky, but well within the norms for a human of his—apparent—age and build, "that I find a damsel flinging rocks at me." He paused as though considering and slowly added, "It happened once with a knight, but I'd already eaten his horse and most of his weapons. The squire, too, as I recall." He tipped his head slightly as though waiting for a response, the same gesture he had made while in dragon shape.

"I see," Alys said.

He raised his eyebrows doubtfully.

Alys stared at her hands in her lap. Dragon or human, he certainly appeared human, and it was disconcerting to have him crouched before her with nothing on.

The dragon-youth sighed and sat down on the cold ground, his right leg folded under him, the left up so that he could rest his elbow on his knee, which afforded some modesty, if she didn't think about it. "Humans," he sighed in a tone that reminded Alys that—whatever was the dragon equivalent to seventeen years old—dragons lived for hundreds of years. "Sometimes I forget."

Alys glanced up and then away. Up long enough that she saw him nod toward the pole to which she'd been tied.

"That yours?"

She nodded, never looking up.

"You had time to get away."

She met his eyes then. Defiantly. "You didn't see me."

That stirred something deep beneath those cut-glass eyes, but it was already gone before he spoke. "Of course I saw you. I wasn't interested until you began to act out of the ordinary."

His superior attitude annoyed her despite her still very real fear. "People staked out on hillsides is ordinary?"

He flashed his cold grin. "It is for me."

She sucked in a breath, reminded of her earlier concern. "Why is it...?" She hesitated, not sure she wanted to know.

"What?"

Maybe she was worrying needlessly. "Can all dragons change to human shape?"

He paused, as though considering how much to tell her. "No," he said, just at the point she realized she couldn't believe him, whatever he answered. "Only gold-colored dragons have
magic." He repeated her own words to her: "'Why is it...?'"

She looked down again.

He forced her chin up.

In a very small voice, never meeting his eyes, terrified of the answer that she had so glibly dismissed earlier, she asked, "Why is it dragons ask for maidens?"

The dragon-youth released her, his hand shaking. Startled, she looked up and saw that he was silently laughing. "Dragons don't ask for maidens," he said. "Dragons are offered maidens."

Alys shook her head to show she didn't understand.

"Is a king likely to be a maiden? Or a village headman? It's the men who make the laws that decree that maidens be offered."

Alys thought of all the lovely old songs, the grieving kings, the valiant knights. "That's a lie," she whispered.

"Perhaps." She saw a glint in his eyes. "I
do
lie."

"Yes," she snapped at him, suddenly more angry than afraid, "just like the old riddle: Everything I say is a lie. But if that's true, then
it's not a lie, so that makes it not true, which means it's a lie, which—"

The dragon swept to his feet, and Alys kept her gaze firmly on his face. "I didn't say
everything
I said was a lie. And I hate riddles. The last time a knight challenged me to a riddling contest, I lost. And then I ate him anyway. Why"—he leaned down with his hands on his knees to put his face on a level with hers—"didn't you run away when you had the chance, before I saw you?"

"You—" Alys had started to say, "You said you saw me all along," but she stopped just short of it.

Maybe he read her thought in her eyes.

She looked at her hands in her lap.

"Why didn't you run away?"

"To where?" she shouted. "I have nowhere to go. They killed my father. They convicted me of being a witch. I'm cold and wet and hungry." She gave a ragged sigh and lowered her voice. "And I have nowhere to go."

The dragon sat down again. "
Are
you a witch?"

"No."

"What are you going to do about it?"

"There's nothing I can do. Except enjoy the thought of you flying over Saint Toby's village and breathing fire and roasting them all, every single one of them, down to the last baby."

The dragon raised his brows.

"Well," she said, "maybe not the babies."

The dragon grinned and stood again.

Alys refused to look up.

The dragon gave an awful cry, like a huge bird of prey.

Alys jerked her head up and saw that he'd resumed his dragon form. Now she'd made him angry, failed whatever test it was he'd set, or simply no longer amused him. The great wings flapped with a sound like sails snapping in the wind, and she threw her hands up to protect her face.

The claws grasped her forearms and she gritted her teeth. But the talons didn't sink into her flesh, they raised her from the ground. Her arms felt as if they would be pulled from their sockets, reawakening the pain that had just begun to subside. Alys opened her eyes and saw that she was already dangling high, high up above the trees. She screamed in terror at the thought that he would drop her and she would
plummet long moments before hitting the ground, or that he wouldn't drop her at all but was carrying her to his lair. She screamed again and again, too frightened to close her eyes against the stinging wind and the lurching countryside.

And then he did let her go.

The rushing air tore the scream from her throat, but she didn't fall for long. And the ground she hit was soft, bouncy. A haystack, she realized from the smell of it, and the prickliness, before the fog of terror cleared from her eyes.

She lay there flat on her stomach waiting, waiting, her heart beating so loudly she could hear nothing else.

A half-lifetime later she finally raised her head, saw that she was alone. "Where are you?" she screamed into the night. "What are you doing to me?"

The night didn't answer.

She lowered her face into the crook of her arm and rocked back and forth. Despite everything that had happened—because of everything that had happened—she drifted off to sleep.

Something dropped beside her.

She gasped, sitting up.

It was a rough-spun peasant dress and a sturdy pair of shoes that she had felt land next to her. The dragon, once again human-shaped, was crouched beside her, this time wearing clothes—a peasant's shirt and breeches. He nodded his head to where she had been lying. "I thought you were crying."

"No," she said. "I don't cry, ever."

His face showed nothing.

"Where'd you get these?"

He gestured off into the pink-edged dark. "Farmhouse."

"You didn't ... kill the people? Did you?"

He paused, with that expression of his that said he was weighing his answer. "They'd run off. Abandoned the place."

She sighed in relief. "Really?"

He shrugged, with a condescending smile. "Perhaps. You better get out of your wet clothes."

"Turn around," she commanded.

He did, but she could see his shoulders shaking once more with silent laughter.

A
LYS FINISHED LACING
the bodice of her borrowed dress and looked up to find the young man who was a dragon unabashedly regarding her. No telling, from that bland expression, if he'd turned a moment before she had, or if he'd been watching all along. Warmth flooded her cheeks, from anger and embarrassment. The suspicion that he could see her blush, even in the dim predawn light, made her angrier yet and even more embarrassed. He sat too close to her, but perched on the top of the haystack, she had nowhere to go. She lowered her gaze to avoid his face. Except for the color of the eyes, everything was just too right.

And nothing was right at all.

She concentrated on her anger, to give her
voice the bite it needed. "That's very rude, you know."

For a long moment he said nothing, as though in the interim he'd forgotten how to speak. Finally he said, "What is?"

"Watching me get dressed. People don't do that."

"Don't they?" he asked with just enough balance between polite inquiry and irony to show that he knew the truth of it.

"
Nice
people don't." He looked momentarily startled, as though taken aback that she could have ever confused him with someone who could be nice. His expression shifted to amusement. Before he could start laughing outright, Alys said, "And I don't like the way you sit so close to me, either." She regretted the words immediately for they gave him yet another advantage over her.

So she wasn't completely surprised when he seized her arm. But she wasn't expecting him to tug. Together they skittered and wobbled down the side of the haystack, sending flurries of hay flying till she landed in a heap, half on top of him, though she'd been sliding down haystacks
for as far back into her childhood as she could remember.

Once she managed to figure out which end was up, Alys jerked her arm to break the dragon-youth's grip. He held on just long enough so that, when he did let go, she tipped over. She fell flat on her back, and more hay showered on her. Furious, she leaped to her feet and ineffectually brushed at the hay that was in her hair and clothes. Unsure how much of her discomfort was actually premeditated on his part, she snapped, "Thank you."

Still sitting at the foot of the haystack, he looked up at her but said nothing.

Surely it couldn't be that easy. "For everything," she added.

Still nothing.

So Alys turned and took a step away.