Somehow, I squeezed into the somewhat large tower room in the East pentacle. I had to be careful where I planted my rear feet and front legs as there wasn’t much room left for Roelle and Marcus. It’d been a major feat to sneak around and join the pair without Random or the rest of the castle knowing.
Random and Corwin knew something was up, he had set a new pair of guardsmen on my tail and it wasn’t until I flew off in a huff that I was alone. For five minutes. And then both Ghostwheel and Murphy attached themselves to me. I only succeeded in escaping them by hiding under the waters of the sea until nightfall and coming out at dark then sneaking up the backside of Kolvan using my talons and tail to climb. I didn’t like to fly at night as that was when the enchantment that let my Dragon body survive was the weakest. I had to fight the constant urge to coil up and sleep. Plus, my blind eye made seeing difficult as I had lost almost all depth perception. Marcus helped once I was out on the ramparts of Kolvan, he placed a minor spell on me that made me a shadow that only a first rate magister could see. Roelle was with him and helped drape a gray cloth around me that he explained muffled the noise and smell of me.
“I don’t smell,” I protested offended and he shook his head.
“Well, Raven, you don’t stink but you do smell a great deal like smoke and sulfur.”
“Especially after you snort,” Roelle said helpfully. “And you do smell like rotten eggs,” she added.
Sulking, I let them push me into the room and Marcus had one more surprise for me. As I stepped over the threshold, sparkles of blue dust covered me, tingled and abruptly, they became as large as Giants. I blinked. They grew in size but the room remained the same.
“I shrank you, Raven,” he grinned and Roelle carefully cradled me in her hands. My voice squeaked were once it’d boomed.
“Can you still hear me? Is this permanent? I’m not much threat to anyone like this. Except maybe a mouse.”
“It’s only temporary,” Marcus assured me. “You’ll revert as soon as you speak the phrase ‘gigantum alternus’. But don’t say it in here or you’ll blow the walls apart. This way, we can smuggle you out of here.”
“Smuggle me where?” I asked.
“Khafra.”
“Khafra? We’re almost at war with Khafra!” My squeak was nearly a Dragon shriek.
“Quiet, Raven,” he hushed and slammed the room’s oak door. “Why don’t you tell the King, the Castle and the Realm of Amber what we’re planning?” Huffing, he went to the corner cabinet in the austere tower and pulled out a wizard’s safe. Its enchanted gargoyle locks opened to his password but not before trying to bite him. Inside, was a thin pamphlet made of Griffin hide, bound by silver wire and written in the blood of elves. Only a few spells were legible although my Dragon sight and knowledge knew more than he’d deciphered. The pages gave off an aura that was…unsettling, almost evil. It had the stench of Chaos and the Logus, of old power best left forgotten.
Marcus turned the page towards the middle of the book and pointed out the complicated spell. From what I could read, I picked up the words ‘body’, ‘receptacle, sacrifice and replace’.
“Marcus, it calls for a sacrifice. I won’t take another’s life to gain back my own.”
“You can read this?” He returned.
“More than you can.” I perused the texts and was able to pull out the general meaning. It was a recipe for disaster but it also gave me a glimmer of hope.
Just when we were settling down, someone’s heavy hand knocked at the open door in a manner that would not be denied. Roelle scooped me up and tossed me into her waist pouch where I clung screeching a shrill protest. There were all sorts of odd bits and pieces in there, some of which were squishy and gross. She thumped me through the cloth and I grumbled in protest but quieted so I could eavesdrop.
“Have either of you seen Raven?” The familiar voice of my head keeper demanded. Rinlon Preel, the soldier who had served my former master Jurt. Jurt, my father’s half-brother and Random’s enemy. Rinlon had saved my life and stood just outside the tower room in his 6 feet of unbridgeable sense of duty.
“I saw him, flying around here yesterday and the king said he was in cahoots with you.”
“Cahoots?” Marcus hooted. “I’ve been up here studying my homework with Roelle.”
Rinlon must have pushed his way inside, his voice was suddenly much closer and louder. “King Random has a very important mission for him and after he’s through with that, Prince Corwin needs him. Where has he gone? Do you know?”
I could feel Roelle shaking her head. Marcus said, “I think he was hungry. He said something about going hunting.”
“He said?” Rinlon asked. I chewed a hole in her bag so I could see.
“Haven’t you heard? Marcus found a way to let us speak directly to Raven and he can speak to us,” Roelle said happily. Inside her pouch, I mumbled to myself. Rinlon’s sharp ears heard me.
“What was that?” He barked. He ran to the window and looked out expecting to see me flapping my wings or hanging off the roof. “Raven! If you’re here, the King wants you in the courtyard immediately!” He waited and snorted. “I know you three are up to something. I can feel it in my bones. Marcus, Roelle, the boy’s seen enough unhappiness and hardship to last three lifetimes. Don’t entice him into anymore.”
I pinched Roelle’s fingers. Dragon snouts were very beaklike and in my miniature size I was quite capable of inflicting a painful pinch.
“Ouch!” Roelle cried and slapped the bag, knocking me into a glass vial of something stinky like toadswort. It made me dizzy.
“Peww,” Rinlon gagged. “What is that? Goblin farts?”
“Toadswort for mothballs,” she answered sucking her finger. “It does reek. I better go dump out my bag.” She leaned out the window that was over the head of the cliffs and emptied the bag, me included. I zipped off in circles like I was drunk although that was another cool thing about Dragon’s–we could drink whole hogsheads and not get drunk.
Rinlon chased them all out of the tower and I followed at a discreet distance. No one screamed or pointed at me. If they did see me, they assumed I was a bird. I confess it was easier to maneuver my way to the palace and I could go places I hadn’t been able to before.
Zipping down the main corridor, I just missed flying up my grandfather’s tail. He whipped around, his hand on his sword, Grayswandir. He looked menacing, not the handsome laid-back Prince I knew not so well.
“Who’s there?” He announced and tingles of magic lifted my wings. I hovered silently in the shadows over his head. “Damn,” he muttered. “I’m feeling Shadows.” He shoved Grayswandir back into its scabbard and departed towards his rooms. I continued on towards Roelle’s room.
She had a small suite of rooms off the Queen’s as she was one of Vialle’s ladies-in-waiting. Born and raised in Rebma, Amber sister city under the ocean, Vialle’s suite had a decided aquatic theme. Pale green and turquoise, restful and calm, Roelle’s was quite nicely done to complement the Queen’s.
I made entry through the transom window and perched on the canopy top of the huge bed covered in a quilt of scarlet and gold dragons. In fact, the entire room had a dragon motif except for the portraits of Random, Vialle and Roelle’s parents, the Baron and Baroness of Loest. Even stranger, a half finished portrait was on an easel next to the balcony doors and covered with a sheet.
Curious, I flew over and tugged at it. With my mouth agape, I stared at a portrait of me, half human, half Dragon in a setting as if I were a knight saving a damsel.
The door slammed and Roelle yelled at me. Startled, I let go and nearly tumbled to the floor. She swatted at me with her empty bag. I was curiously agile but furiously defensive, protesting all the way as I dodged her increasingly accurate swipes. She connected and slung shot me across the room to bounce off her mirror. Cracking into a thousand pieces, I was carried to the floor in a barrage of little glass daggers. They hurt. I lay there, stunned, in pain and bleeding. She threw herself to the floor on her knees and carefully picked me up. My long neck and head hung limp. “Oh beards of Hernin,” she whispered. “Raven. I’m so sorry. Are you hurt?” She carried me to her bed and gently began to pull up the splinters, applying healing lotions to the cuts. She was crying as her hands filled with my blue blood. “Raven, what have I done?”
“Get Marcus,” I whispered, trying to pull out a particularly deep dagger that had pierced my chest.
“Can I leave you?”
“He’s near. Just yell out the window for him.” I closed my eye and concentrated on calling him, too. The urgency in our summons brought him at a run and he came into her room without knocking. After one look at me, he pulled out his magister’s bag concocted a healing potion that he carefully poured it down my gullet and on the wounds. I felt dizzy and then sleepy.
He ordered Roelle to make me a nest and gently placed me on a bed of soft wool. “He needs to rest and let the potions work. Roelle. Tell me what happened?”
Shamefaced, she explained and to his demand, she showed him the portrait under the cloth.
“I see,” he commented and placed a chair under her doorknob. “We need to sit with him tonight. In case the spell reverts and he grows larger.” He peered in at me. “Raven, how do you feel?”
“Sleepy,” I muttered wanting to stretch but it hurt too much. She stroked my chest with her finger and the rhythm relaxed me further. I yawned a puff of green smoke that escaped me.
“Sleep, my Dragon Sprite,” she murmured. I closed my eye and dreamed that I traveled through the deep Forest of Arden with my hand tucked into hers, that I ran on two strong legs and was wholly human.
In my dreams, I remembered the taste and feel of a woman’s lips and the play of human muscles, mortal frailties. Although in my Dragon scales and bones, I was one of the most powerful creatures known in existence, I wanted my old form back with a passion I’d forgotten since I’d roamed Amber’s skies.
In the morning, I opened my eye, stretched and flapped my wings to stir the air, waking my two erstwhile guardians and friends.
“Marcus? Roelle?” I asked climbing to the top of the chest and perching on the rim. “Are you awake?”
“Aye,” both agreed.
“I’m in.” I told them to their stunned faces. I was equally stunned when they explained they had no idea I needed convincing to join them on this quest.
The first thing I wanted to know was whether Marcus could spell me back to my original size as being bird sized was a definite danger. I missed my forty foot splendor.
We exited Roelle’s room (with me tucked inside her bag once more) to commandeer the north tower and Marcus put me back to normal. My wounds were gone with them, the soreness and redness. I flapped my wings and soared up into the skies, rapidly disappearing from sight.