Chapter Eighteen
Just for that moment, caught completely off guard, the wizard Dahr stared blankly. Krije repeated—and this time it was a defiant roar to overwhelm all his other roars, “Take me, what do you want with him? He’s done you no harm, but I have, and proud of it, and I’d do it again! Me, not the idiot!” He spat at Dahr’s feet.
A very young woman standing next to Princess Cerise began to whimper and tremble and the Princess drew her close, all unaware. The silence on the castle rooftop was broken only by the deep wintry breathing of the waiting dragons, and Robert found his eyes once again drawn irresistibly to them. They looked back at him, every one, feeling him as he felt them. But what do you want? What do you expect of me? Dahr is master here, not I. He thought of the dragonlets at home—Adelise and Lux and shy Reynald—and tried to see them in the magnificently menacing forms towering all around him. What is it we know about each other?
The wizard shook his head slowly, in something like admiration. “There’s gallantry, Krije, no question about it. No king, at the last, but only a father willing to sacrifice himself for his son. But how can you know that I will let him live after I’ve avenged myself on you? What reason would I have to keep my word to one who murdered me?”
“Reason?” King Krije laughed then, for the first time. “Reason? You forget that I know you, Dahr. There wouldn’t be one minute’s pleasure for you in killing that poor fool—aye, or my people, either, or burning down this castle—if I weren’t there to see it.” He lowered his voice slightly, pointing a sausage-sized finger at the wizard. “And if you try that now, if you or your pets make a move toward the boy—why, then you’ll have to kill me straightaway, old friend, because I’ll come for you. And I will have my hands on you, whatever you do, and this time I’ll take that staff of yours and I’ll shove it—”
Dahr, his poise restored, waved him grandly to silence. “Never mind, never mind, most articulate Krije, it shall be as you wish. You are quite right, I have no interest in your son or your servants. Your castle, yes—it will suit me splendidly, for the time being—and your ill-gotten little empire, entirely. And I have certain plans, certain visions… but really, I came back for you alone. The rest is… incidental.”
“Honored.” King Krije sketched a clumsy, uncomfortable-looking bow. “So. It’s settled, then?”
“It is settled.”
On the word, there came a rasping downrush of air, as the six largest dragons took wing from the battlements, surrounding Krije, who stared only at the wizard Dahr. The dragons craned their necks to consider the King. Some even ran out their flame-red tongues, as though to taste him.
Prince Reginald found his voice, gritty and raw. “No. No, bloody hell, absolutely not! Take me, if you’re bound to kill someone—take me, by all the gods! Live out my life with his sacrifice, his martyrdom, hanging around my neck forever? Thank you very much, I’d rather die! You’ll take me and like it, do you hear?” Lurching, he thrust himself between his father and the nearest dragons.
Dahr cocked a sardonic eye at Krije, his smile a razor slash. “A certain family resemblance there, I think?”
“Aye, to my disgrace!” Krije thundered, shoving his son forcibly aside. “You’ll die for no one, boy, it’s not in you to do! You’ll live a long, useless, namby-pamby life and die in bed—your own, more’s the pity—with priests and women all around you. Out of my way now, and see how a man dies! And tell your children, if you should ever somehow manage—”
Prince Reginald hit him. It was no open-palmed slap, but a powerful punch with a shoulder as broad as Krije’s behind it. It landed squarely on the king’s mouth, and Krije dropped his spear and went over like a bowling pin. He was up almost on the instant, crown gone, spitting blood and lunging for Prince Reginald’s throat. They rolled together at the dragons’ feet, while Dahr the wizard stepped back, laughing truly for the first time. “At it, go to it, by all means!” he cried. “Settle your score—if not now, when, after all? But don’t damage your sire overmuch, good prince—he’s mine!”
In the midst of the thundering insanity happening all around them, a small motion drew Robert’s eye: the girl slipping free of the Princess’s sheltering arm. Cerise looked like every day of their journeying: sweaty, dirty, straggle-haired, bad-tempered, with several broken fingernails and a bruise on her left cheekbone. Robert thought he had never seen her so beautiful, and the realization terrified him. Please, no. I’m a dragon-exterminator. I’m a dragon-exterminator with visions of being a valet. Please.
King Krije’s soldiers, however cowed, had remained with him to a man; but most of the servants and other castle folk were slipping away on every side, with no hindrance from the dragons, or from Dahr himself. The wizard was clapping his hands slowly and deliberately, letting the sound echo over the castle roof. “Entertaining,” he said. “For a time.” He nodded once to the dragons, but spoke directly to Robert and Princess Cerise. “I would stand no closer, if I were you. There is often a certain back draft to the more complex spells.” His white hair and beard glowed richly in the light of the descending sun.
“Wait,” Prince Reginald said. “Wait.” His voice was different, the voice of a child. “Wait, what are you doing? That’s my father.”
“Be still, boy!” Krije’s growl was low and strangely calm—dignified, Robert thought wryly. To the wizard Dahr he said, “I wouldn’t come too close to me either, if I were you. In case of accidents.”
“Indeed.” The wizard studied the King meditatively, as though they two were the only beings anywhere under the peach-colored sunset clouds. “Your pardon,” he said with all apparent sincerity. “I have been anticipating this precise moment for so long, in this world and elsewhere, that I begrudge every instant of my vengeance, every least drop of it. You will understand better than most, I think.”
“Indeed,” Krije mimicked him. “Just get it done with, will you? How much longer must I listen to your yammering?”
“Not long,” the wizard answered softly. “Not long at all.” He raised his hands before him, framing King Krije between them, like an artist shaping an unpainted portrait in the air. Prince Reginald cried out desperately once again, “That’s my father!” and Krije had just time to rumble, “Be still, damn you!” before Dahr brought both hands down and spoke. Where King Krije had stood there remained a golden statue, its arms folded and a ferocious scowl on its gleaming face.
Prince Reginald jumped for Dahr’s throat with the same savage abandon that his father had leaped for his own, but was brought up as brutally short as though the air between him and the wizard had turned to glass. A dreadful groan went up from the onlookers, and even King Krije’s soldiers scattered for the stairways and passages that led to the ground and escape. From where he stood, Robert could see them tumbling onto their horses or simply fleeing blindly across the lean landscape, constantly looking up and back as they ran, for fear of pursuit by Dahr’s dragons. But there was none.
Prince Reginald gathered himself for a second futile assault on the wizard Dahr. He was raging and crying together, and the others tried not to hear anything he shouted, because it felt too shamefully like eavesdropping.
Robert shouted, “Highness, no, you can’t help him that way!” The Princess herself was in tears, sinking under a wave of helplessness, a sensation as unfamiliar as it was infuriating.
Dahr ignored the struggle. He was admiring his handiwork, prowling around the golden Krije, considering it from every angle. Robert heard him sigh, “Simply beautiful—haven’t lost the old touch,” and then, “Such a pity… I could almost wish…” The statue of King Krije reflected the setting sun off the dragons’ scales, in fire.
“Enough.” Dahr spoke no charms, made no visible gesture, but Prince Reginald abruptly fell silent and still. Dahr said, “There is no more time for foolishness. What I do now needs sunset to be effective. Say your farewells, if you will, and stand away.”
Robert felt a sudden chill on his skin. The statue’s eyes were King Krije’s eyes, frozen in golden fury. Dahr followed the direction of his glance and nodded serenely. “Yes. He is there. He will always be there.”
“What are you going to do?” Princess Cerise’s voice was unnaturally even as she fought to keep it from trembling.
The wizard Dahr looked first at the red and pale green bars ribbing the horizon, then turned slowly back to her. He said, “Great monarchs of the past have often made royal thrones of their enemies’ skulls and skeletons. I’ve always found that sort of thing vulgar in the extreme.” The slow, closed-mouth smile seemed to slither across his face. “Krije entire will be my very throne, my golden seat of power and majesty, and not only will everyone who kneels before it know this, but so will Krije himself.” They stared at him, sickened with understanding, and Dahr nodded amiably. “Oh, yes. His form may change, but his consciousness—that unique perception that made him the Krije we all know and love—that will remain. I’m sure Krije would have it no other way. I certainly wouldn’t.”
Prince Reginald remained mute and motionless, whether through wizardry or simple shock Robert could not tell. He himself stayed rooted where he was, without thought or hope, and so without words. The Princess Cerise, however, was not, and Robert stood in awed admiration of the words she proceeded to employ, for three-quarters of which Odelette would still have sent him to his room. The golden King Krije appeared to be listening with practiced interest, and even Dahr cocked an ear and chuckled appreciatively. “You’d have made a splendid witch, my dear,” he observed, with apparent sincerity. “There’s real power in you, real flair. A pity there’s not the time to take you in hand.”
“If I were a witch,” the Princess began, but Dahr stilled her with a gesture; he was looking not at her, but at his waiting dragons. In the silence, Robert heard inside what no one else on the vast roof could hear: the wizard was addressing them by name. Just as I do, back home. Is Dahr my kinsman, then? Is that what I’m feeling here?
The six dragons who had first encircled Krije—Robert provisionally identified two of them as the biggest snap-so’s he had ever seen; the others were completely new species to him—drew in even closer around the golden statue, positioning themselves as precisely as though they had been rehearsing the process—and maybe they have, Robert thought. With one hand on Cerise’s shoulder, he could feel her trembling with… what? Robert wondered. Fear—confusion—anticipation? I know less of this woman than I know of these dragons.
“Gold is a comparatively soft element when it occurs in nature,” the wizard Dahr informed them, placidly professorial. “The gold I make, however, is of a rather different spirit. It is so hard that nothing in this world can melt it—nothing, that is, except a dragon’s fire. And not all dragonfire, but only that of certain beasts born with the gift of shaping, which is the rarest and wildest of traits among their kind.” He nodded proudly toward the six dragons. “I think of these, you might say, as my goldsmiths. Watch now.”
He spoke, and the dragons responded.
It began far down in the deep, swaying belly of the largest snap-so. Beyond simple sound, it came first as a shuddering in the great stones beneath their feet, and built to the roar of an avalanche. It was joined by successive mounting rumbles as each of the remaining five dragons joined in turn, until Krije’s fortress shook to its bedrock roots. The impossible fire from the leader’s mouth was white as a lightning bolt, nuzzling the golden King as affectionately as a house cat in a genial mood. Krije showed no effects at all; if anything, his defiant sneer seemed to grow more contemptuous. It’ll take a volcano, Robert thought.
But it took only six dragons, six flames of what sometimes seemed a dozen different hues, to lick and caress and lovingly erode the great statue down to a bubbling yellow puddle with soft golden lumps in it. What came next would color their dreams.
Frozen cold to the core by horrified fascination, unable to turn away from the terrible remaking, Robert and Cerise looked on as the dragons went to work. They employed their fires like tongues and tongs and sculptors’ chisels, swiftly rolling, molding, and smoothing the melted gold until it began to rise out of itself in a new form… that of a massively magnificent throne: but wondrous to Robert’s eyes, who had never seen anything remotely that grand in Bellemontagne. Even Krije would have liked it, he thought in his dazzlement. I’m sure he’d have been impressed.
The dragons stood back from the golden throne, and it blazed atop the castle like a beacon of wicked triumph. It should have been unbearably hot to the touch for at least a day, born of such fires, but Dahr stroked and petted it, in the way that one pats the head of a child, or of a helpless enemy. “There,” he said to it, “there. You have at last become what you were always meant to be, my dear Krije—the seat, the footstool, of one infinitely greater than yourself. And you shall commence your new career immediately—when I dine this evening with your son, with the charming Princess you planned for him to marry, and with their nameless but interesting servant. So glad you could be with us, old friend.”
His eyes met Robert’s for a moment, and Robert felt his stomach shrivel. What does he see of me? What do he and his dragons know of me that I don’t? Speaking for his companions, he kept his voice timid and humble. “Sire, Majesty, we may not stay. We must away on the road to Bellemontagne this very night, to restore the Princess Cerise to her home, her anxious parents—”
“But this is Prince Reginald’s home.” The wizard sounded distinctly wounded. “Or it was, and it would be ungracious and unmannerly of me not to allow him to display its lost grandeur to his fiancée—”
“I am not his fiancée,” Princess Cerise said quietly.
“Ah? Well, in any case, I cannot permit you young people to set off in the dark on such a long and undoubtedly perilous journey without at the very least seeing a proper meal into all three of you. No, no, certainly not—what sort of a host would I be? If you will please accompany me—”
“I wouldn’t take food from your hands if I were starving to death in an oubliette.” Prince Reginald’s voice was as bleak as old armor, and as hoarse and rusty as though he had not spoken for years.
“You would if I insisted,” the wizard Dahr answered him. “And I do insist.”