The magic started to slip out of her control. Lucy’s thoughts gathered in one passionate objection: No! The turban responded and used its own power to bolster hers long enough to complete the spell. Lucy felt the net change under her fingers. From a stiff, unresponsive inanimate thing, it became supple as a vine and strong as steel.
The dragon felt the change, too, and his efforts to escape increased to sudden terror. But he was too late. The net molded neatly around his body and pinned his wings to his sides. Drawing power from the metal grid beneath the road, Lucy’s spell instantly hardened the net and turned it as rigid as the iron bars. Fyremantle was now trapped beneath an unyielding cage. He thrashed his head up and down and blew gouts of fire from his cavernous mouth, but he could not move.
Lucy fell back into her father’s arms, gasping for breath. “Notwen’s estimate of fifteen minutes may be optimistic,” she shouted to Kethril. “The spell is weak. I don’t know how long it will last. We’ll have to hurry.”
The sheriff and the gambler worked their way around the trapped dragon. Everyone else stayed out of sight.
“Fyremantle!” Kethril shouted over the dragon’s furious rumble. “Fyremantle! We want to talk to you!”
“How dare you!” roared the red, and he breathed a viscous stream of fire directly at them.
Lucy cringed close to her father as he raised his fist and the silver ring of Istar. The dragonfire bounced off the power of the ring and splashed around the two people in streams of yellow and orange.
“Stop it!” Lucy yelled before the dragon could take another breath. “Your fire will not harm us. Nor do we intend to harm you. We just want to talk.”
Fyremantle paid no attention. He fired another jet of scorching flame and watched furiously as it fell harmless around them.
“I said stop it! If you don’t, I will shrink this net and cut you to pieces,” Lucy cried. She wasn’t sure she could do that, but it didn’t hurt to threaten.
Kethril pointed to the freight wagon close by. “And if you aren’t careful, you will burn that wagon that holds Malys’s tribute, then you will have to explain to her why your delivery is nothing but a molten blob.”
Fyremantle hesitated, his black eyes malevolent but thoughtful. Steam curled from his nostrils. “Whatever you have to say will not save this town. When I escape from this cage, I will incinerate everything.”
“I would think about that very carefully if I were you,” Lucy said reasonably.
The dragon lowered his head until his nose was only a few feet away. “Why?” he said in a long, drawn sound that was almost a snarl.
Lucy kept her hand clamped on her father’s. The reek of the dragon was almost more than she could bear. It took all her self-control to say, “We want to make a deal.”
Kethril pulled his map out of his tunic and held it up for the dragon to see. “A map of this region. Do you recognize anything on it?”
The dragon had to tilt his head to look at the map. He studied it for several minutes before the significance of several marked places snatched his complete attention. Without warning he snorted a gust of flame that caught the map and reduced it to ash.
Kethril merely shook his fingers and pulled out another map. “The advantages of living in a town full of forgers.”
“It has come to our attention,” Lucy said before the dragon could respond, “that you have hiked up Flotsam’s taxes without Malys’s knowledge so you could steal some of it for yourself. We want you to stop.”
“I am lord of this region. I will do as I please,” Fyremantle replied. He tugged fiercely at the net around him then sank back, panting.
“Indubitably. However, we believe Malys will not appreciate your efforts at self-enrichment. She does tend to be rather jealous and unreasonable.”
The dragon stilled, his glittering eyes fastened on Lucy and Kethril. “I am loyal to my overlord,” he protested.
“So she must think, too,” Lucy said. “It would be a shame to tell her otherwise.”
“You will never tell her!” bellowed the dragon. “You cannot prove it!”
“Of course we can,” Kethril said, his tones cool, “and we will unless you leave Flotsam alone.”
“I will burn it first. No one will escape to tell my queen.”
“Too late,” Lucy said. “We already have a messenger on the way, and if she does not receive a message from us, she is instructed to deliver our letter and proof to Malys.”
Fyremantle bellowed and threw himself against the constricting net. Lucy and Kethril scrambled back and watched breathlessly as the huge dragon struggled and thrashed until his scales were scored and his head hung in exhaustion. Still the ensorcelled net held.
When he had been still for a moment or two, Lucy and Kethril eased forward to continue the conversation.
Lucy went on. “The only way you can stop the messenger is to agree to our proposal. You will continue to collect the taxes from the town, but we will only pay the original six hundred pieces of steel. And you must give your word to leave the town alone. It cannot make its contributions to Malys’s treasury if you burn it.”
Kethril waved the copy of the map. “Just to ensure your good behavior, we also included one of these maps.”
“Why?” hissed the dragon. “Malys already knows the site of my lair.”
“Lairs,” corrected Kethril. “We found your lairs.” He drew Lucy to the freight wagon with him and pulled back the tarp to show the contents to the dragon. “When the Flotsam city taxes were stolen, the people had to look elsewhere for the money. One of your lairs is now empty. You can pay Malys Flotsam’s taxes this year to make up for all the years you were stealing from the towns around here.”
“No!” Fyremantle growled. “You’re bluffing!”
Kethril reached into the wagon and pulled out a large doublehandled king’s cup cast in gold and encrusted with garnets. “Remember this? And how about this?” He pulled out an elegant cutlass and waved it in the dragon’s face.
Dragons can remember every item of their hoards down to the last coin, and Fyremantle was no exception. He was so angry he sputtered sparks.
“If you try anything against these people,” Lucy warned him. “We will tell Malys about your other lairs.”
“I will hide them again,” he steamed.
The gambler tossed the sword back in the wagon. “We found them once, we can find them again.”
Fyremantle raised his head and stared to the southeast as if fearing to see some sign of Malys. “All right. I agree.”
“You agree to what? I want to hear you say it loudly so the whole town can hear.” Lucy insisted.
Fyremantle hissed, but after a moment, he bellowed in a voice heard all the way to the Rock, “I agree to leave Flotsam alone and collect only the taxes due to Malys!”
“Now that wasn’t so hard, was it?” she said sweetly.
“Release me!” he roared. The powders were slowly wearing off, and Fyremantle felt his full strength returning.
Lucy realized it, too, and she knew it would be far better to have the dragon trap remain a dangerous and mysterious thing in Fyremantle’s mind than to allow him to break loose himself. Swiftly, she reached out, touched the net, and nullified her spell.
The strands returned to normal. Behind the wall of the building next to the dragon, Challie drew her axe and swiftly sliced through the ropes holding down the net.
Fyremantle shrugged and felt the net slide off his shoulders. He bounded out of the trap and halted long enough to shake out his wings. “I will find a way to make you pay for this,” he snarled to Lucy and Kethril.
In that instant of silence, they all heard the faint sound of pony’s hooves and the rattle of a small cart coming along the road. Lucy turned cold. From a side-street several blocks down she and Kethril saw Saorsha’s pony cart turn onto the street and abruptly stop. Its two occupants gaped at the loose dragon crouched in the middle of the road.