Master of Dragons

I would like to
acknowledge the assistance of my friend and military adviser, Robert Krammes,
who has been of such inestimable help to me on these novels, and to his wife
and my dear friend, Mary Krammes, who has served as wardrobe mistress to
Evelina.

LYSIRA ENTERED THE
ENORMOUS CAVERN THAT WAS THE ANCIENT Hall of Parliament for dragonkind. The
entrance was located in the tallest peak of a snow-capped mountain range.
Gaping black against the white-shrouded crags, the opening had been carved
hundreds of centuries ago by dragon-magic. No need to hide it from humans, not
this far up the mountainside. The entrance was large enough to accommodate a
dragon in flight. Lysira was small for her kind, and she swooped into the
entryway with ease, glad to leave behind the glare of the sun glittering on the
snow for the restful darkness of the Hall.

The dragon spiraled
downward, drifting on the whispering air currents, listening to the silence
that was dark in her mind. The Hall was empty. Parliament was not in session.
She was not really supposed to be here, but she felt drawn to this place.
Disturbed and troubled, she did not know what to do or where to turn for
answers, and so she decided to come here. Perhaps if she were in the Hall
itself, she would be able to glean some of the wisdom of those who came before
her, pick up a trace of their colors. Learn from their experience. At least,
that’s what she’d told herself.

Gliding downward
on still wings toward the floor that was far, far below her, Lysira was
bitterly disappointed. She saw only darkness. The cavern was empty. If there
were ghosts, they slumbered in the eternal dragon dream that was death.

Upset, Lysira was
not paying attention to what she was doing, and the floor came up on her before
she was ready for it. She landed with an ungraceful thud, nearly going over on
her nose. Recovering, she was thankful that no one was here to have witnessed
such a fledgling bumble.

She was especially
glad that one particular dragon was not present—the Walker, Draconas. Her
scales rippled all over in embarrassment at the thought. In truth, it was
because she’d been thinking of him and everything he’d said at the last session
of Parliament that she had botched her landing. But she couldn’t decide if it
was his words that bothered her or if it was the way his colors had so gently
touched her.

Settling on the
floor, tucking her wings in at her flanks and wrapping her long tail around her
feet, Lysira gazed around the dark and empty cavern and sighed. She could at
last admit to herself that she’d been hoping—rather unrealistically—that she
would find Draconas here.

She didn’t know
why she expected him to be in the empty Hall.

Perhaps because he
wasn’t anywhere else.

Dragons
communicate mentally, mind-to-mind, using images and vibrant colors to exchange
ideas. A dragon may block another from entering his mind, just as a human can stop
others from entering his house. But, just as the house is still there, so is
the mind of the dragon. Though the colors are unreadable and prohibit entry,
they shimmer like foxfire in the night. And Draconas’s colors were nowhere to
be seen.

Dragons dislike
making hasty decisions. Lysira had been unsettled ever since the last meeting
of Parliament—the meeting that had thrown the dragons into turmoil, the meeting
in which Draconas had disclosed that the two children born to the human woman
Melisande could communicate mind-to-mind, as could dragons. Not only that, but
these humans could actually enter the minds of dragons! This was an awful,
dreadful, catastrophic calamity. What’s more, Draconas had told Parliament that
one of their number was a traitor, one of them was feeding information to the
rogue dragon Maristara and her cohort, Grald. Because of this, Draconas had
hidden away the two children, and he refused to tell anyone—even Anora, the
wise elder dragon, the Minister of the Parliament—where they were to be found.
He’d also claimed that this same traitor had been responsible for the deaths of
her father and Braun, Lysira’s brother.

That meeting had
taken place sixteen years ago. A long time, by human standards. A mere eye
blink by dragon measuring. Lysira had spent those years dithering, wavering
back and forth, trying to decide if she would talk to Draconas or not. For a
couple of years, she thought she wouldn’t. He was the Walker, the dragon who
took human shape to walk among humans and keep an eye on them. He had,
therefore, lots of humans’ images in his mind, images Lysira found disturbing
and distasteful. And fascinating.

It was the
fascinating part that bothered her. She’d seen only a few of these images the
last time he’d spoken to her, and she had since discovered that they kept
cropping up in her dreams, breaking her tranquillity. Try as she might, she
couldn’t banish them. She didn’t want to see any more of them. And yet, she
did.

Once she had made
up her mind that she would talk to him, a few more years passed before she
found the courage to do so. She would start to approach him and then she would
shy away and retreat back to her lair in a flutter of confusion.

This made her
angry, and for the next year or so, she turned her anger at Draconas and blamed
him as the cause of all the trouble. She knew she was being irrational. He wasn’t
the cause. Maristara had started it all by seizing that human kingdom and then
breeding humans with dragons to produce humans with dragon magic. Lysira didn’t
like to admit that part.

At this point, she
decided that she didn’t need Draconas. She would find out who the traitor
dragon was on her own. Lysira’s investigations were halfhearted, however, and
didn’t get her anywhere. The other dragons she questioned were brusque and even
rude. They obviously did not want to think about any of this. They were hoping
it would all go away. They shut their minds to her and shooed her off.

Which brought
Lysira right back to Draconas. She would talk to him. She was determined to
talk to him. Boldly, trembling, Lysira reached out her colors to him.

Only to find that
the colors of his mind were gone, as though they had been wiped away by a wet
sponge.

Lysira crouched in
the empty Hall of Parliament and, for the first time, she began to be afraid.
Not only for Draconas, but for herself. And all of dragonkind.

Anora felt true
regret that she had to kill Draconas.

Of all the walkers
who had sacrificed their dragon form to take on the illusion of a human,
Draconas had been the best. One of the hazards of being a walker, of living
among humans, was that the dragon tended to either become too human—in which
case he forgot the reason he’d been sent to walk among humans in the first
place—or he remained too dragon—in which case he moped and pouted and whined
about having to put up with the inconveniences of being human.

Draconas had been
the first to separate the two halves of his being, maintaining a firm division
between the dragon and the human. Even now, though it appeared that he was acting
for the humans, siding with the humans, and protecting the humans, Anora knew
better. Draconas was doing what he was doing because he firmly believed he was
helping his own kind.

Admirable.
Mistaken, but admirable.

She stood, masked
by illusion, inside the building where she’d set her trap for Draconas.
Watching him from the shadows, she pondered the idea of letting him live. She
could try to explain to him that he was wrong, hoping he’d see reason. She
discarded that thought with a regretful sigh.

Draconas’s asset
had become his liability. He was working hard to keep humans and dragons at
peace, as they had been since the first human had raised himself up off all
fours. Draconas would never understand why that peace had to end, and Anora
knew he could never be made to understand.

He had to die.

Draconas had his
back to her. She’d been spying on him from the moment he’d entered the
abandoned building. He was here to set a trap for the dragon Grald, the master
of Dragonkeep. Grald, disguised in his own stolen human body, was heading this
direction.

Grald and Anora
were in contact, the colors of their minds blending, though not very
harmoniously. Anora was thinking of her own lofty goals. Grald was thinking of
vengeance. But what could you expect? Grald was a dragon of the baser sort. He
did not come from one of the noble families of dragonkind, who had ruled the
world for centuries. In human terms, Grald was a peasant.

He’d been brought
into this conspiracy by Maristara, who had chosen him because he was a peasant—rough
and crude and not overly educated.

The elder female
dragon, Maristara, had formed a theory—a brilliant theory—that if dragons and
humans bred, they would produce offspring that would look human, but would be
capable of using dragon-magic. Anora remembered how shocked and appalled she’d
been at first hearing Maristara’s proposal, brought to her in secret. She’d
been adamantly opposed to it—not only did it break all the laws of dragonkind,
it could prove dangerous for dragons. Creating humans with magical powers! It
was not to be considered. When Maristara had defied her and seized a human
kingdom in order to begin her experiments, Anora had vowed that she would do
everything in her power to stop her.

Time passed. The
dragons, with their usual ineptness and inability to make decisions, bungled
any chance of halting Maristara. The experiments in breeding proceeded and went
far better than even Maristara had hoped. Sadly, as time passed, Anora had come
to see things Maristara’s way.

These humans with
the dragon-magic in their blood proved to be so powerful that they intimidated
lesser humans. Thus, they made perfect rulers. And, because these humans had
dragon-blood in their veins, they were easily manipulated by the dragons.
Dragons ruled the half-dragon humans who ruled the humans. Perfect all around.

Maristara needed a
male dragon to start the breeding program with the human females of Seth. She
didn’t dare choose one of the males of the noble houses, for fear word would
get out. She selected a male from a family of lesser dragons, a young male,
aggressive and ambitious and cruel.

His name was
Grald.

She taught Grald
the secret of ripping the heart out of a living human body and taking over that
body, making it his own—a task far less complicated and time-consuming than
casting the supreme illusion spell that changed Draconas into a human. Unlike
Maristara, who used the human bodies she took to disguise her true form, Grald
usurped the human bodies, giving them his name and taking over their personalities.
He was on his sixth human right now, and this was his favorite. He had found
something better, however, and he was looking forward eagerly to taking over
the next body—that of his own son.

Before that could
happen, Anora and Grald had to kill Draconas, who had done everything in his
power to thwart them.

“I think you would
understand,” Anora said silently to Draconas, speaking to his back, as he stood
across from her in the doorway of the building, sharpening his walking staff
into a spear. “I think you might even take our side, but ... I can’t be sure.
You have formed attachments among the humans. You hid Melisande’s children away
from us. If Ven had not cried out to us for help, we might never have
discovered them.”

“Quit sniveling,
Anora. He should have died long ago.”

Grald’s colors
intruded rudely into hers, and Anora, haughtily, didn’t deign to reply She saw
no need to explain herself to underlings. Maristara let Grald take too many
liberties. She should keep him in his place.

“Where are you?”
Anora asked, her colors chill.

“I am in sight of
the house. My son summoned me,” Grald added with smug triumph. “He betrayed his
brother, as I told you he would, to gain the female. Like father, like son.”
Grald chuckled.

“I don’t trust
him,” Anora said. “Ven is devious—devious as a dragon—in many ways. I should
know. I spent weeks in his company.”

“All the better
for me when I take over his body.”

You’ll acquire a
brain, at least, Anora thought, but she kept that caustic comment concealed
beneath the cold flow of her colors. Dissimulation was not difficult to
practice on Grald, who never bothered to look beneath the surface of any
conversation.

“Don’t come any
closer,” Anora warned. “I’m about to strike.”

“Take care you don’t
hurt Ven,” Grald said. “I need his body whole and strong.”

“The only one hurt
will be Draconas,” Anora said softly.