A gloved hand closed over mine on the railing, and I discovered the duchess beside me. I had not seen her come up. “Merry Christmas,” she said. “I’d been thinking I ought to have a special present for you this morning, but after you gave that shawl to the Lady Maria I realized I’d be wasting my time.”
She was teasing me, of course. “Oh, I can love any number of different ladies at the same time,” I said airily, gesturing with my free hand. “After all-”
Her grip tightened, but I realized she was not listening to me. “Look, over there. What’s that?” she said in an entirely different voice.
I looked. Beyond the forest, high above the hills, a dark cloud was coming rapidly toward us out of the north. But it was flying too low and moving too fast to be a cloud. For a moment I wondered if it might be the air cart, bringing someone to visit from the wizards’ school, even though it was coming from the wrong direction. But as it approached, I realized it was much too big to be the air cart.
It was a dragon.
The duchess and I were not the only ones up walking on the parapet, and several other people had seen it too. One lady screamed, but several other people looked toward me questioningly, and one even laughed a little. They thought it might be another illusion.
This was, unfortunately, no illusion, but a real dragon. “Get down!” I yelled. “Get inside!” I grabbed the duchess in my arms and leaped off the edge of the walkway, flying us down and landing in the courtyard with hardly a bump. “Don’t let it catch you outdoors!”
Although for a second I was afraid that blind panic would replace complacency, as all the ladies began screaming at once, I did manage to get them herded into the center of the hall. “Keep them calm,” I told the duchess. “I’ve got to try to stop it.”
I ran back to the high door out into the courtyard. The dragon had arrived.
It flew to the castle with extreme purposefulness, but now that it was here it seemed to be contemplating its next move with leisurely interest. It was perched on the top of the north tower, looking around with apparent curiosity. Then it looked down at me like a cat observing a mouse. It was too big to fit in the windows or even the door, but if it had wished it could easily reach in a clawed foot to grab us. I was almost gratified to see that it quite closely resembled the illusory dragon I had created last month, down to the emerald scales, even though mine had had six legs and this one four. But the red eyes did not glow with magic: rather, with active intelligence.
What was I going to do with a dragon? My mind seemed incapable of thought. For a moment the dragon and I locked glances, then it shot out a thin tongue of flame from its nostrils, and I had to jump back.
I found Joachim at my elbow. He had his crucifix before him and a grim expression on his face. “Don’t go out,” I said. “It’s not evil; it’s just a dragon.”
“But it could kill us all!”
“Of course it could, and it probably will. It’s doubtless very hungry after flying for thousands of miles, down from the northern land of magic. In a few minutes it may decide to start dismantling the castle with its claws. But it’s still not evil incarnate, just the wild forces of natural magic, unchecked by any wizardry.”
If Joachim was startled to hear this calm, academic statement he gave no sign. I was fairly startled myself to discover that my mind was compensating for a lack of good ideas by the repetition of a phrase from a half-forgotten lecture.
But why was there a dragon in Yurt? The dragons never, or almost never, left the northernmost land of wild magic. I caught a glimpse of the old wizard from the corner of my eye and remembered him saying that he thought that too many wizards practicing magic had worn the channels of magic so smooth that anything might come slipping in.
But surely my own magic was rough enough not to invite a dragon! The wizard at any rate did not say, “I told you so.” He stood next to the chaplain and me, while we looked out at the dragon and it looked at us, and both sides tried to think what to do next. Until such time as it decided to start ripping the walls down, we were fairly safe, because I did not think it could reach all the way to the center of the great hall, in spite of its size.
The dragon was truly enormous. Its feet were planted on top of the north tower, its long scaly neck stretched far across the courtyard, and its spiny tail hung nearly to the ground. Its red eyes darted to and fro, and its wide mouth lolled open, revealing hundreds of teeth and a long forked tongue. It seemed to be wondering which ones of us to eat first.
The old wizard attacked. Suddenly, zipping around the dragon’s head, there were a cloud of red bubbles, which darted, touched him, and sprang away again. But if this was intended to distract the dragon or even drive him away, it was ineffective. Clinging to the doorpost, thinking this had to be a bad dream and that Gwen would wake me soon, I watched as the dragon batted the bubbles of illusion away with one clawed foot and looked down at us with growing irritation.
There was a commotion behind us, and then Dominic and the duchess pushed past us, leading a group of knights. They were all armed with swords, spears, and shields, and several carried bows. Dominic may have bolted in terror from my illusory dragon, but he seemed to have no hesitation in facing a real one. I was ashamed that he, at least, seemed to have an excellent idea what to do.
With a roar from Dominic, the small war party charged. They ran up the stairs toward the parapet, trying to get closer, and the first archers set off a flurry of arrows.
But these bounced harmlessly from the emerald scales. The dragon turned sharply around, and as its tail swung it ripped roof slates loose. The knights and the duchess had their shields up just in time to protect themselves from a roaring burst of flame. As the dragon readied itself for another breath, they lowered the shields for a second and threw their spears.
Most of the spears bounced off as harmlessly as the arrows had done, but one lodged for a second in the dragon’s throat. It reared back, clawing at the spear until it fell, but where it had pierced the skin was a tiny drop of black blood.
“The dragon’s throat,” said the old wizard in my ear. “It’s the one vulnerable point on its body.”
But the knights did not have a chance to try throwing their spears again. The dragon leaped at them, beating its scaled wings, and with a swipe of a claw had knocked several into the courtyard, where they landed with metallic crashes. Then the dragon sprang upwards and circled over the castle, its head back, roaring in pain. In the few seconds before it returned, we ran out into the courtyard, helped the knights gather up their companions, and dragged them into the relative safety of the hall.
All of them were scorched, and several were badly wounded. Dominic, who had been knocked off the wall, seemed to have several broken ribs. He was the worst, but all had suffered in one way or another. The duchess was not directly wounded, but all her hair, where it protruded from her helmet, had been burned off.
The dragon returned to the top of the north tower, where it lashed its tail and looked down at us with real fury. I glanced over my shoulder. The chaplain was helping deal with the wounded. Most of the women in the castle were clinging together in the center of the hall, all with white faces and many sobbing uncontrollably. The king and queen, their hands linked, were embracing as many as they could reach, ladies and servants alike, and trying to talk soothingly.
I was shocked to see a dancing pair of blue eyes among the stricken faces. The Lady Maria, with rapt attention, was thoroughly enjoying the dragon.
The duchess was exchanging her shield for another, less scorched, and picking up a spear as though planning to go out again. “Stay here,” I told her. “You can’t stop it with force.” My slow mind had at last given me an idea.