Before I had traveled a league or found breakfast, I was dive bombed by a particularly ugly stone gargoyle and I didn’t mean ugly as in appearance although he was that, too. Murphy had found me and he was in a vicious mood. Brought on no doubt, by my disappearance and lack of response to Random’s summons.
He had the power to make my existence miserable even in this form. Although I could dispatch him with one bite, he wasn’t afraid of me. He landed on my back, reached forward to grab my eye horns and steered me back to the Castle. His heels dug into the muscles where my wings joined my shoulder and using them as spurs he goaded me to drop heavily into the bailey. I was so pissed I didn’t check to make sure it was empty first and nearly squashed a pair of practicing armsmen.
Murphy thumped the back of my head and he used his stone form to do it. It hurt. Rather than admit pain in front of the guards, I turned my head around and snarled. He wasn’t impressed at my show of teeth and I wasn’t about to break any on his stone fists. I sulked.
“Good boy,” he said flatly and dropped to the ground reverting to his gray humanlike skin and form. He was still ugly but in the way that a beautiful sculpted piece of art could be hideous as well as beautiful. “You dismiss your Liege Lord’s summons, Raven?” He asked in his gravelly voice. “Have you so little respect for your father? Your grandsire and great uncle?”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, Murphy. I remember Royal protocol. Look, I was busy elsewhere. I was on my way as soon as I could. You know I only move about during daylight hours.”
“I’ve seen you at night, flying over the realm,” he pointed out.
“It’s not the physical me.”
His mouth dropped open. “You speak!”
“Oh yeah. Marcus found some kind of spell and fixed that. I don’t need Ghostwheel.”
“That’s good. Merlin is having some issues with Khafra and has sent Ghost to spy. I’ll be taking over for him.”
“Great,” I said dryly. “Do I get to piss on my own?”
“Do dragons pee?”
I lifted my leg and left a huge puddle in the bailey’s sand that stubbornly refused to drain. I would have pissed on him if I thought I could get away with it. “What’s this secret mission that the King wants me to do?” I asked.
Murphy grinned. “Secret mission? What gave you that idea? He wants you and me to fly out to the Graylin Peaks and survey the mines for bandits.”
“Graylin Peaks! That’s a week’s journey even by my wings!” I protested.
“We’d better get going then.”
“Murphy, I can’t,” I started, thinking furiously. “I can’t be that far away from the Unicorn’s Bower at night for a week, let alone the time to fly out and back plus however long the actual mission would take.”
In truth, I had not been away from the Castle or the woods for longer than a night’s journey. I wasn’t sure what would happen out of reach of the Unicorn’s magic. It was her magic that kept the dragon’s body alive and me in it.
“Oh,” he said thankfully. “Well, let’s go ask her.”
“Huh?” I asked stupidly.
“You can talk to her, right? She’s your mum? Let’s go ask her.”
I heard the approaching footsteps of a group of people and one I recognized among all others. I turned around (carefully) and bowed to the Queen and her husband, the merry red haired, short jokester called Random. Vialle kissed me on the snout, her aim unerring even though she was blind.
“Raven, my dear. How are you?”
“In the pink,” I said but refrained from smiling as imagining that was a scary sight. She laughed and I caught the image of a great terrible lizard bedecked in pink scales.
“Your Majesty, surely not a lizard,” I protested, cringing. With my luck, she’d sculpt me in that shape and I’d become a household staple like a salt shaker.
“Raven,” Random snickered and then frowned. “Murphy, I thought you’d be getting ready for your trip to Graylin by now.”
“Seems there’s a problem, your Majesty,” Murphy started, his gray eyes narrowed and suspicious. I don’t know how he knew when I was up to something, but he always did. I couldn’t get away with anything.
“Raven says he can’t leave the environs of the Grove for more than a day.”
“Oh.” They exchanged looks. “Perhaps the salt mines? There was talk of a riot. Perhaps the sight of a Black Dragon will quell their larcenous desires?”
“We’ll see to it, Majesty.”
“After that, the Dresden Plaines need to be fired. Perhaps Raven could see to that as well?”
For the next two weeks the King and Murphy had something for me to do every day. I wasn’t exempt from their chores until it was time to lay my head down at night and sleep. I was not sure why dragons needed to sleep unless it was because my magical body needed to replenish it’s ‘whatever’ but as soon as the sun went down, the urge to hibernate became a powerful compulsion.
I didn’t get to see Marcus or Roelle. Not even when it was time to eat. Murphy made sure I ate on the wing or in the forest. There was no shortage of deer and he showed me plains of huge creatures like buffalo but with horns as large as a Texas steer. Colored piebald and tasted like chicken.
I expelled so much fire that I actually ran out and developed a craving for blue stained dirt that I honed in on with my dragon radar. It was found in several spots on the mountain slopes; after I gorged on it, I belched flames and farted explosions of pure methane that ignited at the slightest spark. Luckily, dragons don’t get heartburn. I called it bluestone and Murphy named it firestone although in texture, it was more like dirt. It tasted like candy and I ate it until I was suddenly sick of the flavor.
I was supposed to ask the Unicorn if I could leave Amber’s borders but every time I sank into sleep, I only slept. I didn’t roam her bower as her companion-it was almost as if she were avoiding me. I was afraid of her answer, afraid it just might be true and I would not be able to leave with Marcus and Roelle.
I’d heard that she was going home for a month as the last of her seven brothers was being married and that Marcus was going as her escort. Along with a select group of guards and King’s emissaries. Random was very conscious of his duties to his barons and lords and would never slight them by sending only a gift. I wanted to send something but had nothing. No dragon hoard or gems or booty.
“Murphy?” I turned to the gargoyle perched on a rocky outthrust somewhere to the south of the Forest of Arden. I’d been pulling up two hundred foot trees for Julian’s ship builders and was tired. Amazed that I could get tired. Of course, I had denuded a good portion of the woods.
“What?” he asked lazily. He wasn’t tired. He’d spent the morning on my back, letting me do the work, the flying, lifting, hauling and the stacking, etc., etc., etc. while he sat on his ass pointing.
“I want to send a gift to Roelle’s brother for his wedding.”
“So?”
“I have nothing.”
“You have this,” he flicked at my scales. Black and hard as diamonds. “Four would be enough for a shield. A Dragon Shield would be a wondrous thing to a young knight. And you shed them frequently.”
“I do?”
“Haven’t you seen the pages scurrying round picking them up? And the Dragon Guards all have armor with pieces on their mail. It is a great honor to own one of your bits of dandruff.” He mocked me and I scratched at my jaw with a hind foot, nearly knocking him off the rock with my tail.
“I thought more like a gemstone that he could sell,” I mused. “But scales would work, too. I wonder if I could pull one off.”
Delicately, I inserted a clawed finger under a nicely curved piece on my flank that was nearly as large as a shield itself. Arrggh. It was like pulling off a finger nail. Maybe not. “I think I’ll wait for them to fall off,” I mumbled.
“Dragons molt only a few times in their lifetimes, Raven. They would be extremely vulnerable in that state. Easy to kill. Your major scales-those over your breastplate and organs would be the last to fall.”
“How do you know all this when even I don’t?”
“I’m a gargoyle, Raven. First cousin to a dragon on our world.”
“There are no dragons on our world,” I said bitterly. “Not here, not on earth or anywhere. I’m destined to be alone forever.”
“Feeling sorry for yourself, Raven?” he questioned. “Perhaps, you have too much time on your hands. Julian asked if you could lend a hand with the harbor. It needs dredging and I told him you would be happy to help.”
“No,” I said softly. Then, more loudly. “NO!! No, I’m not dredging the harbor, I’m not cutting down ship’s masts and I’m not burning off last year’s grass and weeds! I’m a bloody Dragon for God’s sake, not a fricking plow horse!”
I flew off back to the forest outside the castle and went to the Unicorn’s Bower to sulk. Once inside, not even Murphy could enter and I was blessedly alone. Since it was still daylight, I did not sleep nor was I bound by her enchantment.
She came to me, delicate, ethereal but all the same deadly, that sharp spiral horn ready to impale any threat.
“Mother,” I spoke and she sat back as she heard my voice as well as my thoughts. “Mother, what are the restrictions placed on this form?”
She dissolved and became the human woman I barely remembered from my childhood. “Raven, you are partially correct in your assumptions. Darkness is always a hazard for you as that is when my power wanes most and you are weakest. But your Dragon body is born of the Pattern as well as the Logus so wherever it exists so do you exist. You will be able to function in darkness if your desire is strong enough. Where is it you wish to go?”
“Marcus has found, maybe, a way for me to become human again.”
“You were never human, Raven. You were born of Chaos and Amber. You only lived on the shadow earth but are not of it,” she returned softly.
“I want to be human, mother,” I said thinking of Roelle and her kisses. Of the portrait of me in her bedroom. I turned my agonized eye towards her face. “There’s not even hope for me as a Dragon! I’m one-of-a-kind! I can’t can even find a mate!” She hugged me and to my surprise, her arms went around my chest, her head was tucked into my chin.
“I hold you here, Raven,” she soothed. “Here, you’re forever as I created you, as perfect as you ever were.”
“But, I’m not alive!” I cried out and left her. The moment my body left her bower, I became the Black Dragon again.