Chapter Eleven
The barrier to his magic had inhibited Jasper’s defense of the castle, but he was doing his best, setting up spells and passing them to others to activate.
And they were holding their own, so why was the itch at the back of Jasper’s brain getting worse?
Danger, it shrieked, and then two things happened simultaneously.
Harewood rushed up, beginning to speak even before he pulled himself to a halt. “This attack was a cover for another one. A sneak attack on the catalyst’s house. The nuns are doing their best and I’ve sent help, but that’s where their mage is. Come quickly, Thornton.”
Jasper could barely hear him through the shrieking in his mind. “Help! Help! Save me!” The mental voice was one he recognized. Cordelia Nettleford!
The formless power that had for so long been threatening to burst forth could be contained no longer. Someone was roaring, and the sound of it reverberated from his own throat, and then all was speed, red rage, and the fervent determination to take his woman to safety.
*
The Welsh mage was holding Delia by one arm, which was inhibiting whatever magic he wanted to make, for he called to one of the men with him, speaking in French. “Restrain the catalyst and I shall get us out of here.”
Two of the nuns had fallen, but the others were targeting the mage’s followers, presumably because they didn’t want to hurt her.
If she cooperated, perhaps they could restrain the mage until Jasper arrived.
Delia was certain he would come, though how she knew, she had no idea.
It was a vague, green-tinged sort of a sense, if that was any sense at all.
Inside the room from which she had been taken, Sapphire was attempting to batter down the window to get at her, and Sister Louise was watching him. Delia thought she might be weighing up the benefits and costs of letting the savage little unicorn out. Don’t do it, she thought. He might be hurt.
The man who had been called had reached her and the mage now. He spoke to the mage, saying in French, “I have her.” He grasped her other arm, tightly enough to hurt, and just as he did, there was a roar from above.
It was like nothing Delia had ever heard. If there could be a bear a thousand times larger than the poor beast that had once been brought to the village fair, then it might roar like this.
She looked up and almost wished she hadn’t. The shadow overhead was not a passing cloud. Above them, rapidly descending toward them, was a dragon. Even if she had not met the tiny murderer of the chicken house, she would have recognized the creature from paintings and illustrations.
The mage shouted a spell and made a throwing motion. The dragon batted aside whatever it was he’d thrown and it fell in a trail of purple sparks, bursting when it reached the ground to blow up another section of wall.
And then the dragon was upon them. Delia caught glimpses of the mage being thrown across the garden, and others of his companions being swept aside with a casual swipe of a foreleg or tail.
The man who held her dropped her arm and tried to run.
She saw a large-clawed paw come down, and then the dragon’s head, darting toward her on its long snake neck.
She shut her eyes but opened them again when she felt her body suddenly plucked up into the air.
The dragon had picked her up in his teeth by the back of her gown. Delia fainted.
*
Delia had no idea how much time had passed before she surfaced into consciousness. It was long enough for her to be somewhere else—somewhere she did not recognize. She was lying on her side on a grassy slope, looking down from a height across a body of water to the steep side of a mountain.
She moved cautiously, lifting herself up on her elbow.
Every part of her ached, though she could see no visible wounds, and her limbs moved without increasing the pain.
A glance told her that the lake, or perhaps river, had mountains on both sides, and that the gentle slope beneath her dropped away suddenly a dozen paces from her hands.
As she looked around, she realized she was not alone. The other occupant had been unseen behind her until she turned her head. He took up the full width of the slope and most of the length, and even so, his forelegs draped over the edge of the drop, as did his tail.
He—she could not have said why she thought the dragon was male, but she could not think of him by any other pronoun—gazed at her with large, calm, yellow-brown eyes.
Perhaps she was still in shock, for she did not feel afraid.
The dragon could have eaten her in one gulp, but he had not done so.
Not yet, in any case. Indeed, if one looked at the situation dispassionately, he had saved her from the Welsh mage.
“Thank you for saving me,” she said.
The dragon inclined his head, as if acknowledging her comment.
He was rather beautiful—a deep emerald-green, shading to mint-green on his belly and throat.
His wings, folded now against his sides, were the deep green of his body but laced with gold, and the spine ridge that ran from the tip of his tail to the horns behind his ears was also gold.
As to his shape, he was everything she had ever imagined a dragon could be.
On first sight, she had compared him to the chicken-house dragon, but up close and now that she was calm, she could see how wrong she had been.
It was like comparing a pigeon hatchling to an adult peacock, or a rat to a thoroughbred horse.
The same number of limbs, ears, eyes, and so on, but on one functional and on the other, elegance personified.
“Where are we?” she asked him, sitting up and looking around.
The dragon stood and walked away, heading along the ledge and around a corner.
With no other viable option, Delia followed him, but stopped at the threshold of a cave whose entrance was so high that the dragon had gone ahead of her into the gloom, crouching and moving forward with his head down and his body nearly touching the ground.
A sudden burst of flame in the interior had her leaping backward. She looked longingly around at the landscape, but could see no signs of habitation, no hint of a possible rescue. If she ran, the dragon could catch her in moments.
He saved me from the mage, she repeated to herself, and stepped resolutely into the cave.
After several steps, it opened out into a great vaulted cavern. The dragon had lit a fire in the middle, and by its flickering light, Delia could see several smaller caves around the perimeter of the spacious central area.
It was cooler here underground, but the fire was not necessary. Except to see by, she supposed. But those tawny eyes had slitted pupils, like a cat’s. Did the dragon need light to see by?
She could not afford to be soothed by the sudden notion that he had lit the fire for her convenience.
The dragon was a dangerous beast. He had already killed at least one person in front of her eyes—for she did not see how the man who had been holding her could have survived, and the mage might well have died from being thrown against the wall.
Furthermore, the dragon had brought her here for an unknown purpose.
But he seemed mild enough at present. He lifted a forearm, claws outstretched—it took her a moment to realize he was pointing to one of the caves, for his paw, with its outstretched claws, looked nothing like a pointing hand.
But he waited patiently, his eyes moving back and forth from her to the cave in the direction of his gesture.
Once she guessed what he wanted and obeyed, she found the cave had been set up with an untidy bed of bracken covered unevenly with a blanket. “Who lives here?”
She did not realize she had spoken out loud until the dragon made a noise that sounded more like a gurgle than a roar, and she looked at him to find that he was gesturing to her.
“I live here?” she asked. “You set this up for me?”
The dragon nodded.
“But dragon, I want to go back to Castle Dronsford. The place you found me. I have responsibilities. I am the unicorn’s maiden, and Mary and Polly need me, too. And little Theo.” She was speaking to the creature as if he was a sentient being, and perhaps he was, for he was shaking his head.
“Will you not let me go?” she begged.
The dragon shook his head and then nodded, and she realized the question was one impossible to answer with the simple gestures that seemed to be their only option for communication.
She tried again. “Do you intend to keep me here?”
That resulted in enthusiastic nodding and another gurgle.
“But what do you want me for?” Delia asked.
She didn’t expect an answer to such a complex question, and she didn’t get one.
Instead, the dragon bowed to her, stretching his forelegs to bring his chest close to the ground and curving his long snake-like neck so his snout was pointed to the ground and she was facing the top of his head, where the spine ridge began.
The posture emphasized the difference between their sizes. She was a fraction over five foot six inches. Since the spine ridge was level with her eyes and the snout down by her knees, the length of the dragon’s head must be upward of three feet. He could, with a bit of effort, swallow her whole.
The bow lasted only a moment, then the dragon turned away and left the cavern. Delia hurried after him, only to see him leap off the path and glide away, his wings spread wide.
Nothing that large can possibly fly. A silly thought. Dragons were magical beasts, and magical beasts were not subject to the same physical laws as the rest of nature. Or, at least, they followed the laws of magical nature, which superseded those others.
He flew fast, too. It took only a moment until he was out of sight around a bend in the lake-filled valley.