“Tell me, wretched man,” the Dragon said, speaking the word like an insult, “where is the princess?”
“Terrible one,” the Eldest spoke, his voice small and cold after the mountainous reverberations of the one before him, “I do not know of whom you speak.”
The Dragon flared the crest on his head and turned his face so that he fixed the Eldest with a single orb. The eye was black as stone, yet fire burned deep inside, blazing so bright and hot that the stone’s surface melted and roiled in the heat.
“Don’t think me a fool, mortal creature,” the Dragon said. “I’ve not made myself incarnate for nothing. I know she must be here. Don’t try to shield her!”
Even before that one awful eye, Hawkeye declared, “There is no princess. Not in all of Southlands. This land has not seen a princess in many years.”
The Dragon hissed again. The heat of his face so near was almost too much to bear. “I have played the game for the Beloved of my Enemy,” he said. “The time is now near. I gave her a year and a day, and she did not return. But all the signs have led me to this place, all the protections surrounding your house—paltry protections though they may be. I know she is here. So I ask you again, little kingling, and I’ll not waste the breath to ask further: Where is the princess?”
King Hawkeye opened his mouth to speak, knowing he invited his own doom. But the Dragon suddenly raised his head high, looking back over his black wings, back across the expanse of the Eldest’s grounds. His nostrils widened and issued a great stream of black smoke as his lips drew back in a snarl that was almost a smile.
A lone rider approached, galloping hard on a bloodred mare.
In a whirl of wings and with a great slash of his long tail that sent many in the crowd tumbling, the Dragon turned to face the incomer. His crest flattened against his skull, and he snaked his long neck out, low to the ground so that he was eye level with the rider. And though both horse and rider were still some distance away, the Dragon could see his assailant’s face, full of such rage that fear had not yet found a grip.
The Dragon opened wide his mouth until his lower jaw scraped along the ground. Seeing what was about to happen, Hawkeye cried, “No!” and flung himself forward, only to be snatched back by his loyal barons.
The Dragon breathed.
Rather than flames, a cloud of steam, searing hot, issued from his throat. That poison carried all fear, all terror, all the death of dreams to flood the heart and overwhelm the soul.
As the cloud engulfed her and her master, the bloodred mare screamed as though ridden to her destruction. She balked, falling hard to the dirt in her terror. When she had struggled to her feet, her eyes white in frenzied rolling, she left her master helpless on the ground.
Lionheart’s mouth was wide in soundless pain, not physical, but a pain that tore down into his very spirit, ripping and shredding as the scorching steam entered his lungs. Smoke blinded him, but he clenched his teeth and felt around for a hunting knife that he knew he must have dropped nearby. His hands felt nothing, but his sight cleared as the smoke parted.
The Dragon, his neck arched like a cobra’s, stood over him. The monster opened his mouth again as though to devour his victim in one bite. But instead, he laughed.
The sound was the cacophony of nightmares. Flames danced about his teeth and fell in sparks on and around his victim, who in the face of that laughter lay as one paralyzed. When at last the laughter finished and smoke roiled in coils all about them, the Dragon spoke.
“Prince Lionheart! Welcome. You wish to try your mettle on me? It’s been some time since a princeling such as you took it into his head to charge into suicide! You make me feel young again.”
Lionheart looked up at him, unable to turn away, gasping and with each gasp taking in more poison. He could not move for the pain that flowed through his veins, as though his blood boiled and burned him from the inside out. And the Dragon’s eyes burned him from above as it studied him.
“You are a tempting morsel, little prince.” He snarled another smile. Lionheart’s face was red, and sweat dripped from his hair. It felt as though his clothing must shrivel away like paper held to a candle. “But alas,” the Dragon continued, “I lost that game! You are my sister’s prey, not mine. No, I fear I must give you up. Perhaps I should eat you instead?”
The prince tried to speak but found no voice. The poison had burned away all sound but the Dragon’s hot breathing.
Then suddenly silver birdsong drowned out all else, though small as a whisper. The next moment someone was kneeling beside him, bent over him protectively. A tiny person, hardly much of a shield, and yet the furnace above Lionheart abated somewhat.
The Dragon stared down at the small veiled girl that ran under his very nose and flung herself over the prince, holding up one hand as though to push the vast monster away. He stared and then he smelled, and his eyes widened at the scent he breathed in.