Chapter Twenty-One
The moon was long down, and the sky thinning green, and neither Princess Cerise nor Prince Reginald had stirred from where they stood watching the nightlong battle—if it truly was a battle; the Princess was no longer sure. Not once had the King breathed fire—not at Robert, even when it had had the opportunity, nor at them, defenseless, within easy range. But there was no further glimpse of Robert: he might well have been swallowed, not by the dragon’s jaws but by the power and mystery of its very being, while it raged so enormously against itself, hour after hour. The Princess was past tears, Prince Reginald far past fear or concern for his image in the world. They waited, and that was all.
Abruptly, between one moment and the next, the King was standing as silent and as unmoving as they. It showed no sign of exhaustion, neither panting nor staggering, and the only change that Princess Cerise could see was in a certain new stillness about the scarlet eyes. The Princess took an impulsive step forward, but Prince Reginald caught her arm. “No,” he said, and his voice was firmer than she had ever heard it, almost harsh. “Not yet.”
The Princess halted. The blood-streaked golden scales blurred, her tired eyes lost focus, and a figure rolled nearly to her feet. Heart and body leaped together: she was on her knees beside it immediately, but knew her mistake even before she saw the white hair and beard.
The wizard Dahr reached for her as she recoiled, but Prince Reginald stepped hard on his wrist. Dahr yelped in surprise and indignation. “You dare, boy? I can turn more than one royal Corvinian imbecile to furniture, if I choose.”
“You needed your dragons for that,” Prince Reginald replied calmly. “You don’t have them with you now.”
The benign smile returned as Dahr freed his wrist and sat up. “I have something better than that.”
“Sending a King to hunt us? To murder a dragonmaster?” Even from his father, Prince Reginald had never heard such contemptuous disdain as the Princess put into her voice. “For such a mighty wizard, there seems little you can do without assistance, Dahr.”
“You think not? You think not?” There was a distinct crack in Dahr’s voice, the first suggestion of anger that he had yet shown. He rose to his feet, sweeping an arm toward the silent, motionless dragon as though showing off a prize stallion or heifer. “Do you know what I have done with this creature? Do you have any idea?” He reached both hands out to the Princess Cerise in a curiously supplicating gesture; he might have been attempting to take her face between them. The Princess backed away.
“What is a dragonmaster, after all?” Dahr demanded. “Someone who can walk safely among dragons? Someone who can make dragons do tricks? Fly them like kites on a string—have them destroy an invading army or serve him as one themselves? Fetch his bedroom slippers, perhaps?” His voice was rising, and Princess Cerise realized that his hands were trembling. He said, “You have seen me do all these things—”
“Not the slippers,” said Prince Reginald, who was a literalist by nature.
“—and I tell you that this may be command, but it is not mastery, true mastery. Compared with what I can do—what I have done—these are children’s games, these are but cat’s cradles, no more. Attend me now!” Aware of the increasing shrillness of his tone, he paused, smoothing back his white mane and finger-combing his beard. The voice became calmer, but he could not quiet his hands.
Dahr said, “I am something more than a mere dragon-trickster. I am something that has never been before.” A giggle slipped out of him then, but only a small one, and only once; it could easily have been missed. He said, “There are endless old wives’ tales of people who were part-dragon, sired by dragons at a crossroads in some evil midnight—all nursery nonsense, nothing more. But I… only I…” He beamed with something oddly resembling innocence at their bewildered expressions. “When you look upon me, you see the scales that clothe the King, the flame we breathe, the teeth that await our enemies. For I am of the King, do you understand me? No master, but as much a part of the King as the wings that lift us to the heavens. No wizard before me could ever say such a thing—only I! Only I!”
His laughter did break loose then, but there was nothing frenzied or maniacal about it: it simply kept going, soft and almost childish, on and on. Is that what happened to Robert? Princess Cerise wondered. Has he merged with the King, too, become one with it? But Dahr is still here in his own body—where is Robert, then? A starveling flicker of life stirred among the tatters of her heart. She said aloud, speaking very carefully, “How did you ever come to trap a King and train him to bear you on his back? I’ve never known anyone who could ride a dragon.”
Dahr reacted with the exasperation she had hoped for. “Have you heard nothing, stupid girl? I do not fly on the King, like some flea! I fly with the King—in the King, if you will—matched to him, indistinguishable, atom for atom, not a particle of separation between us!” But the question itself piqued and inflated him. Glaring, he struck a proper wizardly pose, with his still-shaking hands tucked into the sleeves of his robe. With his splendid head outlined by the rays of the rising sun, he began to declaim. Prince Reginald went and got the Doppelh?nder to lean on while he listened; the Princess Cerise stared past Dahr at the dragon, desperately willing the great creature to open once again…. And the King stood looking back at her, its scales seeming to shift and flow in the feeble morning light, the scarlet eyes telling her nothing.
“The last of the Kings,” the wizard said. “I found it asleep in the depths of the cave where my spirit had dragged my body from the hogpen where Krije threw it. There we rested long, while I slowly—how slowly!—knitted self and soul together and the King dreamed a King’s dreams. I”—he raised his head proudly—“I entered into those dreams by a path I know, and so I learned many things. The making of dragons was… only one of them.”
“And you learned to join with the King,” the Princess Cerise said slowly. Prince Reginald blinked back and forth between them in some confusion.
“To unite with it,” Dahr corrected her. “Can you not yet understand that I am the King, as we stand here, no matter that I am smaller and go on two feet? Can you not understand that the King is me—that you are speaking with him at this moment? That there is no boundary, no border where one leaves off and the other begins?” As though to confirm their shared identity, the dragon reared its head high above his, making a low and wicked sound.
“No boundary,” the wizard repeated. “Not between our identities, not between our powers. How could there be?”
“Can you breathe fire?” Prince Reginald asked with real interest. Princess Cerise kicked his ankle.
“Would you like to see that?” The wizard’s glance was suddenly aglitter with malicious mischief. Prince Reginald considered and shook his head.
Princess Cerise said quietly, “I don’t believe you.”
Something was happening to Dahr’s eyes, and Prince Reginald took a step backward. The Princess said, “I think you are no more a part of the King than you were of those dragons you bred, or created, or whatever it was you did to them. At least you could hold those to your will”—her dark eyes narrowed like those of a much older woman—“although in a little while they would have been Robert’s as they were never yours, and you knew that then. But I have seen a King now, and I have seen you….” She smiled and left the sentence unfinished.
Prince Reginald fully expected thunder and lightning on the instant, to be followed, quite possibly, by an earthquake or a hurricane. All those prodigies of nature were gathering in the strangeness of the wizard’s eyes. The Princess said, “You might—I say you might—have learned a little from a dozy King in a cave, but you taught it nothing, of that I am certain. You might even have been permitted to direct it—once or twice, perhaps, for a short while. A very short while. But there was never a chance in the world that you could ever join with such a creature, as you claim. I think”—and here her voice shook, just a trifle—“I think that is forbidden, even to the greatest… I think even my Robert—”
Dahr pounced viciously on her weakness. “Your Robert! Your Robert got himself eaten for his temerity, as well he should have been. He dared challenge me, he dared rush in blindly where I had labored in the cold darkness of the cave—he thought to steal my glory, to mimic my triumph while evading the cost of it, the cost! The cost!”
Spittle was flying from his thin, bearded lips, and he was panting like a dog as he ranted on. “I paid for what I am—paid for it in hunger and loneliness, paid in the pain of healing from what your father had done to me.” He glared at Prince Reginald out of eyes like rotting fruit; then his attention returned to Princess Cerise. “Your foolish Robert is no dragonmaster, not as I am. Never as I am. Nonetheless, he has a certain way, a certain kindness with them—call it what you will—that I, perhaps, have not, and cannot afford to have running loose in the world. And your other fool is stupid enough to come back for his father, and strong enough to make a bit of a nuisance of himself. So I fear”—and he bowed mockingly to the Princess—“I greatly fear that Your Highness will be the only one who is not a dragon to leave this place. Farewell, then, and do give my fondest regards to dear old Antoine.” Absurdly, and rather horribly, he winked at her. “I don’t think your mother really likes me.”
Prince Reginald and Princess Cerise looked at each other. Prince Reginald said, “Since coming to Bellemontagne I have been forced to learn how foolish I am, and how slow to understand so much. But I do believe that I have just been insulted. Apart from being threatened with death.”
“I believe so myself,” the Princess replied. To the wizard she said, “I came here with two friends, and so will I leave. Step aside, sir.”
And with that, addressing him neither as my lord, nor even as Master Dahr, she walked straight past him—elbowing him slightly, Prince Reginald thought—toward the King.
What the Prince saw, as she did not, was the sudden fear spreading across the wizard’s face like a birthmark. Princess Cerise never looked back at him, but stood calmly in the dragon’s immense shadow, her head tilted back to view the great creature entire. She was so fully taken up with regarding the King, and the King with studying her—and Prince Reginald with trembling for her—that none of them were paying any attention to Dahr, as he stepped away, bowed toward the sun over his crossed arms, and began mumbling inaudibly to himself. The air noticed—it twitched and dimmed for an instant—but no one else did.
Princess Cerise’s voice was as clear and firm as it had not been only a moment before. “Robert. Hear me. Where you are, hear me, Robert.”
The scarlet eyes narrowed to wary, gleaming slits, but the King gave no other sign of interest or recognition. The Princess said, “You know me. As I would know you if you were truly a dragon—instead of its soul.” She hesitated then, suddenly uncertain of the gamble she had taken, but went on steadfastly. “I’m right, Robert. I know I’m right. What he pretends to be, you are. Look at me—talk to me. I’m not afraid.”
As Prince Reginald could tell, she was very much afraid, as was he. Monsters tend to dwindle notably in the light of day, but the King seemed to have grown greater since dawn, the illusion perhaps born of the glitter of its golden scales in the sun contrasted with the dark swell of the ribbed wings, huge even when folded. The dragon bent its head down toward Princess Cerise, baring what looked to be an endless row of six-inch fangs and running out its red forked tongue. The Princess whispered, “Robert?”
What happened next happened very fast.
The wizard Dahr turned back to face the King. His uncrossed arms seemed to leap into the air like live things—wings at last set free—and he uttered a vast screech that could not possibly have come from a human throat. The two humans hearing it had heard it before, and knew it immediately for the hunting shriek of a King dragon with its prey in sight. The beast itself, in seeming response, snatched up the Princess Cerise in its mouth, lifting her to a height that made Prince Reginald shudder to recall how the wizard’s own dragons had played with the soldiers of Bellemontagne, tossing them up and batting them back and forth like shuttlecocks. Sickened at the memory, he started forward, swinging the Doppelh?nder far back over his shoulder, meaning to slash with all his strength at whichever part of the King came first within range. But the thought of the dragon, enraged, dropping the Princess—or worse—stayed his stroke. Instead, he wheeled in frustration and knocked Dahr down with the flat of the great sword. The wizard neither protested nor retaliated, but only lay on his back and giggled. Prince Reginald dropped to his knees and began to pray. He was no better at it than Princess Cerise had ever been at fainting…
… which she felt seriously aggrieved at not being able to do, even in this dreadful and certainly final moment of her life. And yet, just as her moment of captivity in Prince Reginald’s arms had turned out an irritating disappointment, so being swept aloft in the dreadful jaws of a legendary horror was—to her own horror—not only exhilarating but alarmingly romantic. The immense fangs never touched her skin, even when she struggled; or if they did, it felt somehow more like a caress. The dragon’s breath, while strong and hot, was not unpleasant: there was a meatiness to it, certainly, but there was the smell of lightning, as when a storm is approaching from the sea. The Princess liked storms.
A voice sounded in her head.
Princess Cerise was used to hearing voices in her head—most often the one of her mother, Queen Hélène, explaining once more (and once more only, Cerise) why it was bad form for a royal to throw spitballs at her tutor and teach the scullery maids to dance a schottische. But she heard this voice all around her as well, and jarring her heart, saying, “I’m here, Princess. I’m here.”
“Oh,” said the Princess Cerise. “Oh.”
“Don’t be frightened.”The voice was unmistakably gentle and earnest, unmistakably Robert. “Please, it’s just me.”
The Princess, who had been lying more or less crosswise in the King’s mouth, cautiously sat up, then managed to stand, clinging precariously to the dragon’s right eyetooth. “I’m not frightened! I told you I wasn’t.” The sea-roll of the dragon’s tongue under her feet made her queasy. She said, “I was right, then? You’re the one who’s—I don’t know—mingled with the King, the way he said he had. You’re it, and it’s you, is that what’s happened?” When he did not answer immediately, she pressed him, “Just tell me, Robert. It’s been a very long day.”
He laughed—so near—as wearily as she felt. “No, I’m afraid it’s nothing like that. No one can do that, join with a dragon, feel what a dragon feels, what a dragon is. No one.”
“But you’re a dragonmaster. You must be. Otherwise…” The Princess Cerise was suddenly very, very tired. “Otherwise, nothing makes any sense.”
“There’s no such thing as a dragonmaster. I’ve spent a very long night learning that. Dahr is powerful enough that he can ride even a King—when the King permits it, as this one did, for its own reasons, its own amusement. But he’s not… what I am.”After a moment, he went on slowly, “What I seem to be.”
“What you seem to be,” Princess Cerise repeated. “But what are you? Where are you?” When he did not respond for a maddeningly long time, she discovered that the inside of a King dragon’s mouth serves excellently well as an echo chamber. “Robert, I am still your Princess. That may not mean very much anymore.” In a quieter voice, she added, “I don’t think it does.” And then, more strongly, “But I am your companion, and so is Prince Reginald, and we three have endured much together… and are you alive, Robert? Are you even alive?”
The answer came quickly and warmly. “Yes, I am, I promise. I haven’t gone anywhere—I just needed to make sure that you were safe”—a sudden chuckle—“and the gods know you won’t ever be any safer than you are right now.” He paused again, but only briefly; she could feel him searching for words. “I think what I am is some kind of… dragon friend. I don’t know how else to put it. Likely enough, I should have known it long ago, even when I was no friend, nothing more than a butcher, a slaughterer—even then I should have known, I did know.” He took a long, careful breath.
“Dragons talk to me, Princess, they always have. It’s just taken me a long time to learn to listen.”
“Those dragons,” she said slowly. “The ones that attacked us—you spoke to them. You made them kill each other. And then at Krije’s castle, yesterday…” Yesterday… but isn’t this still yesterday? All one long, long yesterday, since we left Bellemontagne… one long yesterday…
“Dahr’s dragons. They aren’t like the others—in a way, they’re not exactly real dragons. But they knew me, even so. I couldn’t control them then, not in Dahr’s presence. I could now.”
The assurance in his voice, quiet as it was, was almost frightening. Do any of us ever know each other? She asked, “But the King?” remembering Dahr’s boasts. “Can you control the King?”
“No, of course not. Nobody does. I’m just… visiting.”
As though it had been listening—and how could it not be?—there came a rumble under her feet and the great jaws widened, so that Princess Cerise, still hanging on to the eyetooth, went up with it, along with a startled yelp. “Stop that!” she demanded, without thinking. There came another deep sound, something that might in a human throat almost have been laughter, and the Princess found herself once again swaying almost as precariously on the dragon’s tongue. She said politely—and only a bit unsteadily, “Thank you.”
“I don’t think Kings understand gratitude,”Robert’s voice commented. “They don’t have much to do with human beings, except by accident. Stepping on houses and towns, and so forth.”
“Dahr said it was the last. The last of the Kings.”
“Dahr wants it to be the last. The same way he wants to believe that he is truly joined with it—that they are the same creature. It isn’t, and they aren’t. It followed us for its own reasons, not because he commanded it to, and it let him come along under its wing, like a—”
“Flea,” said the Princess quietly. “Like a flea.”
“Flea, then.”Robert hesitated. “Princess, I asked the King to take you out of harm’s way, because I couldn’t tell what Dahr was up to, or what Prince Reginald was likely to do trying to save you. He has courage, but I’d suggest you keep pointy things away from him when you…” Princess Cerise drew breath to interrupt, but he let the sentence trail away. “I can’t give it orders, no more than Dahr can. But I think it will set you down, if I ask nicely. Courtesy does seem to matter.” He grinned at her—suddenly purely, heart-stoppingly like the boy she had heard in her parents’ castle, several worlds and lives ago. “A dragon’s sense of humor is not like anyone else’s. It’s not human.”
“Robert, I’m not—” she began, but she could tell that he was no longer there, wherever there was. A moment later she found herself standing free on the morning grass, without having noticed her liberation, so slowly and gracefully had the King managed it. She turned and curtsied to it, as her mother the Queen had spent so much time and patience teaching her to do (Because it’s polite, Cerise! Because people will think you’re a charming little girl if you do this, and only you and I will ever know the truth); and it seemed to her that the terrible head dipped slightly in some sort of acknowledgment. Then Robert was stepping from the shadow of the dragon, and the Princess Cerise whispered his name and forgot about curtsying and most other things.
The first thing she said, the words muffled against his lips, was “Don’t worry about my mother.”
At the same time he said, vaguely trying to get her hair out of his mouth, “Your mother’s going to have me absolutely hanged.”
The second thing he said, looking over her shoulder, was “Get down!”
His violent shove flattened her to the ground as he dropped beside her, a split instant before a blast of fire so intense that it singed the ends of her hair passed over them, incinerating one of the few trees in the field. Raising her head—though Robert kept pushing it down—she could see the wizard Dahr rushing upon them, not merely breathing or spitting fire, but smiling it, singing it, screaming it, drooling it from the corners of his mouth. She and Robert were sprawled directly in his path, and the only thing between them and crisp, crackling death was Prince Reginald, held back by the flames from heading the mad wizard off, and reduced to repeatedly thrusting the Doppelh?nder between Dahr’s ankles in hope of tripping him up. It was not working.
“Run,” Robert said.
“Fat chance,” Princess Cerise replied.
She had immediate cause to regret this. Robert was on his feet, racing away across the field, shouting back insulting challenges that would have shocked his mother but would certainly have impressed Ostvald and Elfrieda mightily. Dahr came after him, burning through the field like fire himself, gaining as though Robert were standing still. His laughter hissed flame across Robert’s back, and the Princess’s body twisted with the agony of watching each lash.
But after them both came laboring Prince Reginald, slowed both by weariness and by the burden of the Doppelh?nder. Recognizing the absurdity of his pursuit, he halted abruptly and, with an effort that left him gasping and on his knees, hurled the great sword after Dahr. It turned over three times in the air and sank deep between the wizard’s shoulder blades, knocking him flat with the force of its impact. He coughed fire once, and did not move again.
Robert was crouched beside him when Prince Reginald stumbled up, still wheezing for breath. Robert’s tunic had crumbled almost entirely to ashes, and Prince Reginald could see the raw burn stripes. They looked at each other over the body. Robert said, “Thank you.”
“Don’t mention it,” Prince Reginald replied. “Sort of thing we heroes do, you know.”
His face was very pale as he stared down at the motionless wizard. The Doppelh?nder had gone completely through him; they could see the tip jutting through his breast. Prince Reginald said, “Excuse me… I never killed anybody before,” and threw up.
Remembering another field, and other flames, Robert remained, ignoring his own pain, until Prince Reginald had somewhat composed himself. He suggested, “We might as well bury him right here. I can’t think of a reason not to.”
“Except that we don’t have a spade. We’d have to use my sword.”
Robert shrugged. “Seems appropriate.” They set the body down, and Prince Reginald, with a single swift pull, drew the Doppelh?nder free. On an impulse, Robert turned the body over to study the dead face, now appearing almost tranquil, almost at rest. “A remarkable man,” he said softly.
Prince Reginald snorted. “So remarkable that I won’t feel easy until we get him under the ground. If then.”
“Not without reason,” said the wizard Dahr.
He sat up, eyes open, smiling and spreading his arms as grandly as a carnival player finishing a sleight-of-hand performance. “My thanks for pulling that skewer out of me,” he said to Prince Reginald. “I could have managed it myself, but I’m not nearly as supple as I used to be.”
The smile broadened as he regarded the two stunned faces gaping at him. He said, still addressing Prince Reginald, “Did you think I learned nothing from being beaten to death by your estimable father? There is dying, and then there is dying, and each time, if you keep your wits about you, you rise wiser.” He stood up, stretching his arms and shoulders as though he had just awakened from a restful nap. “Unfortunately,” he added, “this does not apply to either of you. But the principle is sound.”
“I knew he could breathe fire,” Prince Reginald mumbled.
The Princess Cerise ran toward them. Robert waved her back with both hands, and for once she actually heeded him, stopping where she stood. Her face was old with fear.
Prince Reginald had sunk onto his haunches and was aimlessly plucking grass blades. “It’s true, all of it, about him and the dragon. It’s all true.”
“No,” Robert said. “No, it’s not true.” He stepped closer to Dahr, standing so near indeed that it was the latter who moved a pace back. Robert said, “You’re a very powerful wizard, friend Dahr. You can create dragons to serve you, and you can turn a man into a gold statue, and you can breathe fire. But you fought all night to make a King accept you into itself, a part of itself, and you lost. And you never had a chance—you had to lose—because you haven’t the least idea of what a King is, no more than I do.” He was crowding Dahr even further now, tapping the wizard’s chest gently but constantly with his forefinger. “You’re a parasite, Dahr. We’re all parasites to a King dragon, but some of us know it, and some of us don’t. You never will, no matter how many times you die and rise. There is wisdom, and then there is wisdom.”
Dahr was trembling visibly with the effort of maintaining control. “And you? You were there all night yourself, and you too struggled vainly to unite with the King. I felt your presence, and I felt your failure. Deny it if you will, boy, but even a parasite—”
Robert interrupted him. “No, I don’t deny that, for it’s no more than the truth. I leaped into the King’s shadow with all my heart, wanting to know what a King knows, wanting to embrace the shadow and have it embrace me, wanting to be rid of my humanity—rid of bloody stupid Robert—just for once, and to be one with something splendid and magnificent and uncaring. Oh, I understand you, Dahr. I didn’t yesterday, but I surely do now.”
He was shaking himself, as much as the wizard, and his voice was hoarse with exhaustion and emotion. “But then I thought of Odelette. Then I thought of my sisters and my brothers, and Ostvald and Elfrieda”—he looked directly into Prince Reginald’s eyes—“and I thought of Princess Cerise.”
Prince Reginald nodded silently. Robert said, “And I thought, perhaps it would be good to… to settle for less. Better, even.”
“I will never tell the Princess that you said that,” Prince Reginald answered him. “There’s my wedding gift to you.” Robert smiled.
The wizard Dahr said, politely enough, “Excuse me. There will be no wedding. Breathing fire is dramatic, but rather wearing, in all honesty. I sometimes forget how old I am.” Prince Reginald made a frantic dive for the Doppelh?nder, but Dahr gestured, as graceful as a dance movement. The sword flamed up all along its length, brighter than the King’s golden scales, and then fell to ash, crumbling like a blackened fire log. Prince Reginald rolled to the side, blowing on his fingers.
“I must face facts,” the wizard said sadly. “I am simply no longer in condition to go chasing people through the shrubbery. ‘Simplicity’ must be my watchword from now on—simplicity and ‘vengeance,’ for vengeance is the truest spice, without which mere action has no savor.” Ignoring Robert, he regarded Prince Reginald thoughtfully, his mouth twitching as though he were lapping up the other’s pain like blood. He said, “Your father killed me long ago, and I took my vengeance on him yesterday. You have just killed me today—what must I do to you to ensure that none of your breed ever trouble me again?” He acted a charade of pondering deeply, while Prince Reginald made a similar show of nursing his hand and braced his legs for one last doomed assault, and Robert set himself similarly to stop him. It occurred to him, in a distant, detached manner, that the Prince was actually an honorable person in many ways, and that it would have been nice to live long enough to get to know him better.
Dahr said, “I have debated simply turning the pair of you into furniture, along the lines of the late—yet present—King Krije. I also considered whether it would be more interesting to compel you to eat each other—untidy, that, obviously—or to summon insects to do the job. It would take longer, but they leave nothing. Perhaps if either of you expressed an opinion—”
“My own opinion,” Robert said tightly, “is that you have fiendishly set out to bore us to death. It’s working.”
“Have mercy!” Prince Reginald chimed in. “Whatever you do to us, great wizard, we beg you—stop talking, and just get it over with. In a heroic lifetime devoted to slaughtering villains, I have never encountered one who chattered so!”
It was childish, purposeless baiting, and Robert, for his part, had no least notion of what it might possibly accomplish. It was merely better, somehow, than standing meekly silent, waiting to be magically murdered—or worse. And it was clearly making the wizard Dahr turn all sorts of unusual colors, which was a good thing by itself. The noises he was making did not sound at all like sorcerous incantations, and that was good too.
When words began to emerge and take shape, he was saying, “Very well—very well, excellent. You have decided me, and I thank you for it. You shall both join my dragons—the one to spend his days on guard behind the golden throne that was, until recently, his lamented father.” Prince Reginald did leap at him then, and it cost Robert all his strength and a black eye as well to hold him back. Dahr looked on approvingly.
“Excellent,” he repeated, “splendid. You will make a splendid dragon, constantly alert and attentive, with a double reason to be so. First, there will be the hope of somehow returning Krije to his former appalling self. Secondly, the eternal possibility of that one moment when I just might be thinking about something else.” Poise swiftly restored, he beamed on them both. “Neither will happen, ever, but it is always important to have a dream, a deep wish, something to live for.” He winked at Prince Reginald. “As I know myself.”
Over his shoulder, Robert could see the Princess Cerise, seemingly paying no heed to their plight, but standing almost in the shadow of the King dragon, as he had stood, as he had yearned for one night to be absorbed, enfolded, swallowed by power beyond his ability to desire. Don’t, Cerise—don’t go where I almost went—it’s so hard to get back, and I don’t know whether you’d want to the way I did. Stay, Cerise….
The wings opened.
The risen sun brought out a curious sheen to the undersides—somewhere between deep violet and purple—that he had not noticed in the light of the half-moon. Wingtip to wingtip, fully extended, they seemed of greater length than the King itself, and Robert realized that what made them dazzle and confuse his eyes was the special glitter of the edges of the scales, razor-sharp and deadly as the dragon’s fangs or blazing breath. Cerise, Cerise…
He looked away, instinctively not wanting Dahr—or Prince Reginald either—to follow the direction of his glance. He need not have worried: the wizard was embarked on a languorously vengeful fantasy of his own. “As for you—exterminator, vermin-chaser, ratcatcher—you shall have your dream almost entire. You may not be magicked into a King, as you have wished all your life, down in your deepest heart—am I not right about that, boy?—but you shall be elevated far above your betters, far above your deserving.” He was stretching himself like a cat for the pure sensual pleasure of the motion, flexing his fingers as a cat does its claws.
Don’t look, don’t look… don’t make him turn his head…The wings were lifting now, a wonder in the sun.
“You shall become my own personal dragon—my mount and my companion, my shield and my footstool. Always at my side (I must tell you, the others will hate you for it), guarding my sleep and my waking equally; always attuned to my call, my humors, my concerns, even my dangers. Rather like a dog, you say?” He reached out and patted Robert on the head, grazing him with his fingertips as Robert backed away. “Rather. Yes.”
Keep control. Hold his eyes to yours.“And why would I be doing that?” Hold his eyes!
“Oh. A sensible question.” The wizard mimed puzzlement, then pensiveness. “Well, perhaps because you feared, from experience, that something untoward might occur—oh, never to your Princess, but conceivably to her family—if you ever permitted yourself to think, even for a moment, about something that was not an immediate need of mine. That might be a good reason, wouldn’t you say?”
Prince Reginald remarked to no one in particular, “The King’s flying.” His voice was conversational with disbelief. The wizard Dahr blinked, shook his head irritably, and swung round to see.
Ironically, Robert, who had been wondering from his first sight of the great dragon how it could possibly get off the ground, never got to observe that particular technique. He had been so intent on keeping Dahr from noticing the King’s behavior at all that he was standing with his back to it, partially blocking the wizard’s view, when the dragon presumably lumbered into the air. When he did turn himself, the King was already bearing down on them, gliding almost delicately, with hardly a wingbeat, more like a falling leaf than a monster the size of the Great Hall of Castle Bellemontagne. The scarlet eyes were half-closed—the flying ones always do that when they strike, Father told me—but the immense jaws where Princess Cerise had stood up were wide open, and Robert momentarily fancied that he could see down and down the red-roaring gullet to where the fire waited. He had one quick glimpse of the Princess, safe on the ground and clear of the shadow, before the King filled the sky.
The wizard Dahr said—quite mildly, considering, “No. Oh, no, I can’t have this.” The King shrieked, and both Robert and Prince Reginald fell to the ground, covering their ears.
They never saw the flames, but they felt them on their skin. It sounded to Robert as though the entire sky were whipping back and forth like a sheet on a line. It filled his head for days afterward; yet what lasted longer in him was the smaller cry of pained surprise that he kept hoping he hadn’t heard.
Lying on his face with his eyes tightly shut for the next year or two seemed a fine practical idea to him, so it was Prince Reginald who saw the pile of white ashes first. It was still smoking—the Prince remembered similar smoke dreadfully well—and smelled slightly of hair pomade.
“Well,” he said aloud. “I might be wrong, but you would think that would do it.” But Robert did not raise his head until the Princess Cerise came to him.