The wedding was held outdoors to accommodate the immense crowds that had journeyed from hundreds of miles away to participate. Gaily patterned tents bedecked the fields and woods so thickly that it seemed as if the forest was attired in silk. Flowers and ribbons were everywhere and the contestants were dressed to rival an Emperor.
The bride was a lovely young lady with summer green eyes and ebony hair, she wore a simple gown of white lace with green roses in her hair.
Lambrecht looked regal in a blue suit with plain gold braid (he was a captain in Amber’s cavalry) and he wore a smile as bright as a shiny new medal. The two were married by a High Bishop of Amber’s only official religion (the Unicorn) and were promised long life, great wealth and a happy marriage. They danced, drank and ate like every wedding I’d ever attended and I learned the lineage and history of his bride. Her name was Lynette, she was the youngest daughter of a well-to-do merchant Lord from one of the Golden Treaty Shadows and Lambrecht had met her when she’d come to Amber with her father to discuss the revised treaty with newly crowned Random. She didn’t look more than nineteen, just about Roelle’s age. Luckily, that had been before my time so she’d never seem me as Raven or the Dragon.
After a big meal and dancing to wear it off, the wedding party was seated in a small gazebo and the gifts were carted in. I was surprised at the amount and the variety of the gifts. Each one was joyously and gratefully accepted from a chest of new linen to a dozen sapling fruit trees. Random had sent the Sergeant with his trained men as the start of a newly married Lord’s Armory and the weapons to match. Last to be unpacked was my crate and as soon as the writing on it was read, anticipation made the air as thick as London Fog.
Carefully and reverently, the young husband opened the silk wrapped package to hold up a medium-sized shield. Plain, black, it shimmered in the sunshine like a diamond. There were a thousand gasps. Some of awe, some of envy. His eyes filled with tears and I saw both Marcus and Roelle turn to look for me.
“Roelle,” he stuttered, at a loss. “Such a gift is priceless. Did you ask for this?”
“No, dear brother. That is the kind of…creature my Black Dragon is,” her eyes were suspiciously bright.
“I would hug you, sister so that you can convey my heartfelt thanks to your great friend.”
“He knows, Lambrecht,” she whispered. “He knows.”
He kept it at his side the rest of the evening and at last light, I went hunting down the valley back towards the roads. Taking only a small bird, I tore to pieces and ate neatly before returning towards the mansion. I spotted a fluttering form on the ground and dipped low to check it out. As I landed, I saw a rabbit flopping on its side, it’s back obviously broken and unable to crawl away. I wasn’t hungry yet I wouldn’t leave it to suffer.
With one clawed foot, I held it down and used my front legs to put it out of its misery. Rather than leave it, I hooked my hind legs and mouth in its pelt and struggled up. I heard a zipping sound on my blind side and saw something shoot off to my left. Nets converged on me. I flapped harder, tried to spit out the fur but the net collapsed forcing me to the ground.
I dropped the rabbit and tore the lines with talons and teeth but before I’d gotten very far, men ran out of the dark and pinioned me. I bit several, actually tore off fingers but I was weakening as the sun had gone down. I started to say the words that would’ve transformed me back to my original size but one of them wrapped a leather thong about my snout while another tied my legs and hands together pinioning my wings. I shrieked and cursed them yet all that emerged were incoherent mumbles.
They dumped me in a sack and thumped it several times until I was dazed. Slung me over a shoulder and presently, tied me onto a saddle. My keeper mounted and we galloped a twisting winding way through the forests until I could no longer remain conscious. I slept, unable to do anything else.
When morning came, I opened my one eye to find myself lying on my back, still tied and muzzled inside the steel barred cage. It smelled like the last occupants had been chickens and were none too clean. I was thirsty and hungry and incredibly angry. Struggling, I twisted and turned trying to get the rope off me.
In the morning light I could see the faces of the men who had had abducted me. Clean-shaven, well dressed and not your average brigand or thief. These looked like professional men, soldiers or mercenaries.
“What are you, little Dragon?” He mused. “You must be hungry. I know you eat meat or you wouldn’t have gone for the rabbit.”
I waited for him to remove the snout thong to feed me. Once freed, I would speak Marcus’s phrase and teach these idiots a thing or two about dragons.
Instead, he pulled out an eyedropper, stuck it into the corner of my jaw and pushed in a meaty broth of rabbit and beef juice. I swallowed eagerly glad to quiet the demon monster in my belly.
“Good? More?” I found myself nodding. “You’re quite the smart little fellow, aren’t you? I heard that about you. Also, that you can speak. Are you related to Random’s Black Dragon?”
“Take off the muzzle,” I said and he stared at me.
“Dieterhof, I swear it spoke. I can almost understand it,” he said over shoulder.
“Well, we don’t need it to conjure any spells. Can you feed it, keep it alive until we reach the rendezvous with it muzzled?”
“I suppose. It takes food by eyedropper, it’s sort of like feeding a wild tiercel.” He poked at my ribs with an index finger. “He’s fleshed properly, not too much fat or too thin. Pretty thing, isn’t he?”
The other men snorted. “Have you seen Jason and Rowley? They don’t think so, minus their fingers, a nose and then, there’s Ben. He’s dead.”
“Dead?”
“Your ‘pretty thing’ slashed his throat with those shiny claws and nearly disemboweled him, also. I heard the boy say he wasn’t dangerous but I beg to differ. He’s clearly a wizard or warlord’s fighting creature. Here.” He tossed over a small hood and a bag of leather closed with a thong.
The man holding my cage caught both by dropping the cage but it didn’t hit the ground. It jerked to a stop and swung on the end of the chain to revolve around a small clearing in the woods, an obvious skulkers lair. There was a rude hut built of fat sticks so that it provided a clear view between them and a small campfire that lit only a two foot circle and probably couldn’t be seen more than a few feet into the trees. The men were dressed in good clothes, not rough or torn as if they were homeless or vagabonds. Their weapons were also expensive and up to date. Someone was paying them or they had a rich customer in mind.
He opened the pouch and I smelled something that sent a pang of fear up my backbone. It was filled with a powder that Roelle had once pointed out to me – a combination of deadly herbs that caused a mind to detach from the body so that another could control the intended receiver.
“No!” I shrieked and managed to roll over. I tried desperately to yell the words to release me from this toy Dragon form but couldn’t open my mouth wide enough to get my tongue around the consonants. He hesitated and the other men closed ranks to stand shoulder to shoulder with him. His eyes were round.
“It speaks! That was clearly a word. Say it again. Do you speak? Do you understand me?”
“Yes, yes, yes,” I panted and drool dribbled onto my chest. It sounded more like ‘eth, eth, eth’ but they understood me. “Pleth, et e o. ‘Ant eathe.”
“Do you have a name? Are you an enchanted creature? Not a human spelled into this form?” He paused. “Do you breathe fire?”
“Orel,” I managed trying to say Corbel the name my master had given me. “No, no, eth.”
“Hmmn,” he said and threw a pinch in my face. Yellow glitters drifted over me, falling softly towards my eye, nose and snout. Desperate, I managed to snort a feeble puff of smoke and heat blowing most of the stuff away but some landed on my chest and legs. Crawling. Crawling up towards my face. I smashed my head against the bars trying desperately to escape the yellow slime but he grabbed me by the horns and puffed more right into my eye. The world spiraled away. Everything I ever knew was lost in the great gray void which had no up or down, day or night, no reference at all. I knew who I was but I didn’t care. I drifted, lost in a limbo where nothing existed but my loneliness, my loss and my despair. I lacked even the will to die let alone live.
***********
When morning came, I blinked slowly and sat up inside the rude little chicken hutch. I was no longer tied like a roaster but the gag was still on. Slowly I raised a front leg and pulled it off to yawn and stretch my jaws. Several pairs of eyes watched me. I was cold and shivered, stoked up my furnace and blew a stream of flames at the fire causing it to blaze into a bonfire. Heat reached me and I turned my backside to it soaking up the warmth. They sat up and watched me. The one I had heard called Dieterhof was the leader and he came forward with my rabbit in his hand. “Hungry?”
“Yesss,” I hissed and opened my wings. Like my forty foot size, my wings were the largest part of me and an impressive size. He pushed the rabbit through the bars and I tore it apart, enjoying the taste of flesh but alas, no blood. There wasn’t a scrap of hide nor hair left when I was done.
“Water?”
“Wine, if you have it,” I said and he brought me a wineskin. I stared at him until he poured me a tankard which I emptied swiftly. I was parched and didn’t stop until the skin was emptied.
“Your name?”
“Raven,” I burped and slowly closed my eyes, settled back on my haunches and rested my forearms on my belly. I felt mellow.
“Named for the Prince?”
“I am the Prince.” My statement brought utter silence.
They packed up after that, caught me up, rebound me and carried me inside his cloak on his chest. The warmth of his body and the motion of his horse lulled me to sleep with dreams that haunted me yet did not let me escape them into wakefulness. They rode hard and long as if they expected others to follow them. I heard and saw nothing from inside his cloak. He smelled of sweat and horse but also, something else. An elusive whisper of a sharp tang that seemed familiar. I spent hours trying to unlock its puzzle.
Days passed. We rode. We stopped. He fed, watered and toileted me. I spent hours in the cage at night and confined in woolen folds during the day. I spoke little and merely existed. They met no others nor did they ride the main roads, preferring to travel the forest paths now made safe by King Random’s patrols.
Finally, we emerged onto a fairly broad lane bordered on both sides by a serpentine fence made of locust poles and exes. Knee-high grass grew beyond until the meadow reached the tree line again. Cow like creatures grazed within and when they saw us, they lifted their horned heads and lowed. Bells around their necks rang out a rough melody.
Dust on the lane stirred under their horses’ hooves. I stretched my neck out from under his cape and stared. The sky here was a deep, even lime green and the trees had a strange orange tint almost as if the leaves were already changing yet I saw not one hint of green anywhere on any tree. The grass wasn’t green, either but a deep maroon and the sky made all of my captors look faintly greenish and ill.
“Where are we?” I asked dully.
“Borderlands between Amber and Khafra,” Dieterhof stated.
“How?”
“Our employer gave us a bit of magic to aid us,” he answered briefly.
“Who? Who aided you?”
His eyes watched me carefully. “The King. King Luke.” I was silent digesting why my father’s friend would want to kidnap me. I had no answer that left me with anything other than unease.