Soul of the Dragon (2 page)

* * *
 

Alexa moved about in silence while she prepared her dinner and checked her gear. She knew when she left that she was embarking on the quest she’d dreamed of for so many years, and had packed the way she would for any mission with a large element of the unknown. Most of her supplies, she’d left in the truck. Guns and ammunition. A small crossbow and arrows and a Taser. A multitude of digital phones, each with a different purpose. A laptop with broadband access, which she doubted would work way out here. And myriad smaller, clever gadgets she may or may not have occasion to use.
 

She pulled a small bag of nuts from her food stores and hunkered down on the pallet, studying Cyrgyn. He looked exactly as she remembered. Massive, powerful, with gentle eyes reflecting a sadness she had never really understood.
 

When he first came to her, she’d been delighted to have a special friend. She’d talked about her days in preschool, her friend Tommy Steen who liked her toy cars but not her dolls, and her desire for a little brother. The dragon had listened more intently than any person she’d ever known. He’d visited often, and she somehow knew never to mention him to her parents. They’d think it was cute that she had an imaginary friend, and she knew he wasn’t imaginary at all.
 

Alexa wondered about that now. She clearly remembered sitting on her window seat, leaning out the window. Cyrgyn’s long neck had allowed him to look her nearly in the eye. Had he really been there? She was about to ask when the hiss of soup hitting flame caught her attention. She grabbed the pan with the hem of her shirt wrapped around the handle.
 

“Do you want any?” she asked Cyrgyn, pulling the pot off its tripod and pouring soup into her metal bowl.
 

“No, thank you. I have eaten.” He lowered his body to the floor and rested his head on one paw.
 

“Is there enough game in this forest to keep you alive?” She glanced up in time to see what she would have sworn was a smile.
 

“It does not bother you that I eat deer and bear?”
 

“No. Why should it?”
 

“You have never wanted to know before. You—” He cut himself short. Alexa looked up.
They’d never discussed what he ate. Not that she could remember.
 

“I what? When have I never wanted to know?”
 

Cyrgyn rose to his forefeet and studied the flickering shadows, looking distinctly uncomfortable. His coiled tail rasped against the rock. “In your dreams. We never—”
 

“No.” Alexa stood as well. Excitement started to flow through her, just like at the beginning of a mission. “That’s not what you meant. Explain.”
 

“I—” His eyes met hers, and he seemed to deflate. “I cannot begin with that. There is too much prelude.”
 

Alexa frowned. “What do you mean? Prelude to what?”
 

Cyrgyn tilted his head to one side, then the other. “Well…” he started, then stopped and looked up at the ceiling. “Ummmm…”
 

Alexa tried to hold it in, but the giggle bubbled through her pressed lips. She held her side and laughed harder at the disgruntled expression on the dragon’s face. “I’m sorry,” she said. “But hearing ‘ummm’ come out of your mouth is funny.”
 

Cyrgyn drew himself haughtily erect and turned his back, almost extinguishing the fire with his tail. “When you are through, we will converse.”
 

Alexa’s laughter echoed in the hidden ceiling of the cave. “Oh, Cyrgyn, come on.” She reached out a hand and tried to urge him back around. “I said I’m sorry.” When her old friend did rotate his head, she saw real hurt in his eyes and immediately subsided. “I
am
sorry. I wouldn’t hurt you for anything.”
 

“I know.” He settled himself back down and gestured toward her bowl. “Eat, now. We have a long journey ahead of us.”
 

“Where are we going?”
 

He blinked. “A metaphorical journey. I do not know where it will take us.”
 

“Will you tell me what we’re doing, and why?” She sipped the soup, then crunched a carrot. “And why me?”
 

After several long moments, he began, “One thousand years ago, a young man and young woman fell in love. It was a forbidden love, as the man was the son of a lord and the woman was but a peasant. They did not hide their feelings, but went to the lord to beg permission to marry. The woman’s family, though lowborn, had done well with what they had and were respected by every level of society. And their blood was pure, with no inbreeding. The lord granted their request.”
 

“That was unusual,” Alexa observed, sipping from her canteen. She’d filled it in the creek outside the cave and had never tasted water so sweet and clean. “Didn’t the lord’s family object?”
 

Cyrgyn nodded. “His mother did. She held great store in nobility marrying nobility. But over time even she was won over.”
 

“What happened?”
 

“None knew the peasant girl was betrothed to a powerful mage. He had traded with the girl’s father at her birth: his daughter’s hand in exchange for plentiful harvests the rest of their lives.”
 

Anger burned in Alexa’s romantic chest. “How dare he? His daughter was worth so little?”
 

“You must understand, Alexa, that times were difficult. The mage was known to be a good man, fair, using his powers to benefit others. But most were afraid of him, and he seemed
destined to live his life alone. The woman’s father had seen many of his friends die of starvation and malnutrition. He did not want the same fate to befall his family.”
 

Alexa dropped her spoon into her bowl and settled against the wall. “I can guess where this is going. They all defied him, he grew angry and bitter and laid a curse on the couple. Did he condemn the village to famine and disease?”
 

Cyrgyn bowed his head. “He did not punish the innocent. Only the lord’s son and the woman. He—” Again he seemed to consider. Alexa waited patiently, letting him tell his tale his way. Finally, he shook his head. “The mage turned the man into a mythical creature. He graced him with immortality and doomed him to watching his beloved die. Many times over, until the last.”
 

A shiver rippled up her spine and goosebumps erupted on her extremities. She understood now why he’d hesitated. Cyrgyn was telling her
he
was the lord’s son, and
she
was the peasant girl he was doomed to see die.
 

Alexa had never thought much about reincarnation. Maybe it existed, maybe it didn’t, but it had nothing to do with her. Ha! The realization that she had lived a thousand years ago and the man—dragon—in front of her was part of a past more vast than she could remember…her mind didn’t quite stretch that far.
 

But her mind didn’t matter, she thought, wrapping her arms around her knees. The moment she’d laid eyes on this man—this
dragon
, she corrected again—she knew they were connected more deeply than imagination allowed. And she’d refused to admit it, but she’d followed not a map to this tiny glade, but her heart.
 

Back to basics. “So, I assume our quest is to resolve the curse and turn you back into a man.”
 

“Aye. That it is.” He waited, his eyes calm, his body still. He exuded the wisdom of the ages.
 

“How?”
 

The big head waved back and forth. “I do not know. We have never come close to success.”
 

Alexa stood and began to pace. “You’ve used phrases like that before. How many times have we tried?”
 

“How many lifetimes?”
 

She nodded and stopped, facing him.
 

“Three.”
 

“And how did it end?”
 

“With your death.”
 

The shiver was back, this time with a chill in the pit of her stomach. Death didn’t bother her. With her job, she’d reconciled with the notion a long time ago. This was different, though, and her reaction felt strangely like…fear.
 

“Elaborate, please.” She let impatience overwhelm the fear. She liked speed and efficiency in her briefings. But a creature who’d lived for centuries, biding time between his love’s lives, could not be rushed.
 

“Alexa, I do not wish—”
 

The roil of emotion coalesced into irritation that she pushed aside. She understood his pain. But she had to know what she was up against. What
they
were up against.
 

“Please,” she murmured, and he gave in.
 

“The first life, the one in which we were cursed, you lived to be an elderly woman. A spinster, living in the woods, caring for her heartbroken dragon, who fought desperately against his constraints.”
 

“We never tried to reverse the curse?”
 

“We didn’t think it possible. Ashamed of his rage and pettiness, the mage died in his tower before we could convince him. Alas, it may have been beyond his power.”
 

“So what did we do?”
 

“We continued. We lived, and loved with an almost telepathic connection. And we mourned. I most of all, when you passed on.”
 

Alexa felt a twinge behind her breastbone. She placed her hand on her chest, and said slowly, “I died in my sleep, of heart failure.”
 

Cyrgyn bowed his head. “That is what it would now be called, yes.”
 

“Then what?”
 

This time his sigh held not only heat, but a tinge of flame. It barely flickered between his teeth but betrayed the strength and depth of his emotions. “I waited hundreds of years. In that time I learned to fly, to cloak myself so I could observe without being observed. I learned the changes in society so I would be prepared to use them when the time came. On the same day, in the same hour, your soul and the mage’s reentered this world.”
 

Alexa unfolded her arms, caught up in the story. “You knew?”
 

“It was part of the curse.”
 

She narrowed her eyes. “It might be helpful if you recited the curse to me.”
 

Cyrgyn pulled back, scraping his hide on the cave wall. His tail thrashed, unfurling in the darkest recesses at the back of the cave. He swung his head from side to side as if trying to shake the echo of the curse out of it. His distress was so evident Alexa wanted to stop him, but before she could, he drew a deep breath, then recited:
 

Betrayers vile, these lovers two,
 

From now beyond, let them be doomed.
 

The man, forthwith, be dragon known.
 

Immortal, all knowing, his power honed.
 

Be aware when our souls doth burn,
 

His power to use, her lover to yearn.
 

Attempt, four times, to overturn
 

This curse and then to love return.
 

Failure then shall mean the end,
 

Her soul to mine, his to rend.
 

“It means—”
 

“I know what it means.” Alexa hugged herself against the chill in her heart. “If we don’t free you now, before my death, my soul will belong to the mage, and you’ll basically blow up.”
 

“No. Worse. I’ll live for eternity, heartbroken. Soul broken.”
 

Anger began to burn in Alexa, an ancient anger she recognized and welcomed. Its
strength would give her power. But she needed to know more, to figure out where to begin.
 

“What happened the other times?” she asked.
 

“In our second cycle, you were the orphaned daughter of a warrior. You learned at the foot of his teacher, and became a mercenary. We found the mage, who retained much of his power and some of his memory. You died attempting to gain his tower.”
 

“Hm.” It sounded like they hadn’t gotten very far that time. “Was it a magical death or a physical one?”
 

“It was physical.”
 

Alexa could tell by the look on his face he didn’t like discussing her death. Now that it was specific, she couldn’t say it made her very comfortable, either. “How far did we get the third time?”
 

Cyrgyn grumbled. “Two hundred years ago you found the mage again. You married him, but when you attempted to force him to reverse the spell, he dragged you both over the edge of the tower.”
 

“How come our marriage didn’t overturn the curse?”
 

“I believed it was because you were not truly his, only lying to try to free me.” Bitterness coated his words. Clearly, he blamed her for that one. “The curse references love. You did not love him.”
 

She nodded, thinking. The tower was a common theme. She began to pace. “We obviously need to find this mage again. Was it always the same tower?”
 

“Yes.”
 

“And you know where it is?”
 

Cyrgyn obviously knew where her thoughts were leading. “I do. But it will do no good to go. It is now a museum in Scotland and he is not there.”
 

Alexa dropped to her bedroll and poked a stick at the smoldering embers in the fire pit. Her mind churned with questions, with possibilities. Something within her burned to go, to seek the evil man who’d doomed them both, and run him through. Of course, she didn’t have a sword in her arsenal, but she could find one. She knew how to fence, so running him through was a definite option. But not yet. They needed a logical plan, a starting place.