Matt looked up and saw the manticore spitting and coughing, then sticking a paw between its jaws and wiping. “Faugh! What manner of man are you?” The monster glowered up at him and accused, “You sought to poison me!”
“Oh, no.” Matt felt a surge of renewed confidence. “Believe me, I wasn’t really planning on having you take a strip of skin off my finger.”
“Rejoice that I took no more than skin!”
“I do, I really do.” Matt whipped out a handkerchief and wiped off his finger. “But if that’s what just a piece of my skin does to your system, imagine what the rest of me would do!”
“‘Twas not your flesh, dunce, but your wand!”
“My wand?” Matt stared down at the stick he had dropped. Sure enough, there was only a stub of it left-and the end was as clean as if it had been polished. “No wonder you got a tummyache!”
“Vile poisoner,” the monster snarled. “Hey, you didn’t have to go biting where you weren’t asked.” But Matt stared at the stub, severely shaken. That could have been his arm-or his neck! Worse, he had lost one of his most potent magical aids-and virtually his only chance of piercing the magical inertia of Latruria! Wait a minute-what chance? Obviously, the wand hadn’t worked too well, either. “Do not come,” the manticore snarled. “Be advised, be warned! Come not into Latruria!”
Matt summoned shreds of resolve. “If I were a peasant or even an ordinary nobleman, you wouldn’t talk that way to me!”
“Aye.” All those teeth curved in a grin again. “But you are neither peasant nor ordinary, are you? And the flavor of your wand notwithstanding, I believe I would find you to be a man of excellent taste!”
“That’s a very old line,” Matt objected. However, he had to admit it was effective.
Queen Alisande stepped out onto the battlements to gaze at the rising sun, feeling the loneliness and the sense of abandonment that came with the aftereffects of a bout of morning sickness in her husband’s absence. She was going through all this for him, and he was not here to support her through it! Her lady-in-waiting hurried after her with a fur robe, tucking it about her and clucking. “Your Majesty, no! Not in naught but your shift! And the air so brisk! You shall catch a chill!”
“Oh, I shall thrive, Lady.” But the robe was welcome, Alisande had to admit. She clasped the edges and said impatiently, “Thank you, good Elise, but I would be alone to compose my thoughts in the sunrise.”
“Majesty, you are not well! You were but now seized with a spasm of vomiting!”
“It has passed,” Alisande said in a tone of steel, “and I must needs clear my head with the freshness of the air. Nay, stay near me if you must, but do not speak, for I would have silence.”
“As your Majesty wishes,” Elise murmured, and fell back a pace, wringing her hands. Alisande gathered the robe more tightly about her and stared off toward the sunrise, then automatically turned to her right, gazing southward, as her thoughts turned angrily to Matthew, who should have been here to hold her royal head, to hold and soothe, to… Then she saw the spread of vast wings, black against the burgeoning rose of the morning sky, and the long sinuous neck that thrust out ahead of them. She stood a moment, frozen, then turned to hurry back inside. “Quickly, dress me! The dragon Stegoman returns!”
“So quickly?” Lady Elise cried. “In only an afternoon and a night? How could he have found the Lord Wizard so soon?”
“He could not,” Alisande snapped. “Pray Heaven he has no worse news than that!”
But he did. Stegoman was still blowing and fuming when Alisande hurried down to the courtyard, and the grooms were hovering anxiously about him. “Fetch him the side of a steer!” Alisande snapped. “He must be a-hungered after so lengthy a flight!”
“I thank thee, Majesty,” the dragon rumbled. “Aye, I am a-hungered-but even more, I thirst!”
“A barrel of ale, quickly!” Alisande snapped to another groom, who paused only to duck his head in a hurried bow before he ran off. “What news?” Alisande snapped. “None bad.” Stegoman seemed disgusted. “None of any sort! I did not find the Lord Wizard-but I most certainly did find the border!”
Alisande stared. “Has King Boncorro marked it plainly, then? Are not rivers and rows of trees enough for him?”
“It would seem not,” the dragon said with disgust “He has cast some confounded sort of invisible wall all along the border. Not knowing, I flew into it full-force, and ‘tis only by good fortune that I did not break my neck! Nay, it sent me spiraling earthward, and I was hard put to pull out of the dive and find an updraft to send me aloft! I tried again, but more cautiously, and slammed into that barrier once more. Then I flew some miles farther west and tried again, but with the same result. I flew back and wended my way east, some miles past my first encounter, and soared once more southward-but the wall struck me on the snout again, and nearly crumpled me anew!”
“Oh, poor beast!” Alisande cried, and stepped up close, her hand rising to the great dark patch at the end of Stegoman’s snout. Lady Elise cried out with alarm, but Alisande paid her no heed. “Aye, I can see where the scales are broke away!”
“They shall grow anew.” Stegoman pulled his head back a little. “I am grateful for your sympathy, Majesty Alisande, but I beg you to withhold your touch-‘tis quite sore.”
“Aye, it must be indeed!” Alisande drew her hand back. “But how is this, Great One? My husband told me he had seen folk rowing across the border on the rivers and trudging across it with packs on their backs!”
“Even so; I saw them, too, and not in one place, but a dozen, for I flew along that borderland for twenty miles or more.” Stegoman’s eyes glowed with anger. “Mortal folk have no difficulty, show no sign even of knowing the exact moment when they cross the border-but I could not cross it!”
A sudden realization of strategy seized Alisande, making her stand straighten “Dragons are forbidden, then.”
“ ‘Tis rank discrimination! Why should we be barred?”
“Why,” Alisande said slowly, “because you are the Free Folk, and pride yourself on not serving any but yourselves-most notably, not serving Evil.”
“King Boncorro cannot trust us, then, can he?” Stegoman said slowly. “He cannot. Folk who are evil may, at least, be trusted to do whatever will most advance their own cause-but good folk can be trusted only to do what their consciences dictate, which is not always in the interests of a king! Mere mortal folk can do little damage, but an angry dragon is a fearsome sight indeed!”
“It is.” Stegoman preened a bit; whatever influences he might have been immune to, flattery wasn’t among them. “Nay, on reflection, I cannot blame the king for wishing to exclude us. I wonder, though, if Matthew shall gain entry through that wretched wall, or if it will keep out any whose will is not in accord with King Boncorro’s.”
Alisande felt a stab of anxiety. “I hope not, or those of my subjects who have journeyed south to visit would already harbor treason in their hearts. Mayhap if you were to walk across the border, rather than fly… ?” She frowned. “I own that it worries me greatly, Stegoman, to learn there is so much commerce across that border, that you did see more than a dozen folk crossing in only a score of miles!”
The dragon nodded. “And half of those miles must be impassable, being mountain peaks.”
“Indeed! ”Tis bad enough that folk do cross that border in both directions and so readily-but ‘tis even more alarming to learn that you cannot join Matthew!“
Stegoman frowned. “Surely, given such a state of affairs, he would follow the course of prudence and…” His voice trailed off; then he said, “No. He would not, would he?”
“Nay,” Alisande agreed. “We speak of Matthew, after all.” She turned away to hide a sudden stab of anxiety-a stab that she felt in her abdomen, and her hand automatically moved toward it. Again she forced it away. “Your Majesty!” Lady Constance came running up, short of breath. “Your Majesty, a messenger has come from Sir Guy de Toutarien!”