Stata said, “Not a treasure in the usual manner, no gold or jewels. They hunted the Dragon Queen and hoped for the reward in finding her.” He paused, then continued, in his clipped accent, “That’s what they told me. Maybe not the truth?”
“Who is she?”
“No one knows. Mages sense when she uses her powers and they grow scared. She is a new arrival, and they say she absorbs all the essence of the world, way too much. There were six mages in Mercia waiting for her to arrive and more coming. The Kondor have all routes into the city blocked, to kill her first and collect the reward. But they are not alone.”
The explanation chilled me more than the frozen air. A queen meant a woman. However, it was the remark about using all the essence that turned my thinking to my sister and the conversations with the Blue Lady. For the first time, I knew true fear. “How will they know her?”
“By her dragon, of course.”
“Her dragon? You’ve confused me.” My heart began beating again. Kendra might attract wyverns, but she had no dragon, so perhaps it was a different person. Since there were no dragons in the world, even if there ever had been, my twisted mind could almost relax because Kendra didn’t have a dragon.
Stata continued as if taking me into his confidence like we were friends, “The woman called the Dragon Queen will recall the last dragon to life. It will break free of its bonds and obey only her.”
“Where do you get this nonsense?”
“The mages know it, at least the older ones. There is a ceremony told in old books,” he defended himself.
Disbelieving he told anything but lies and half-truths, I’d about lost my patience. A guide and translator for a dozen invaders starving to death might tell any story in order to survive. I persisted, “But, how did you get the information. You’re not a mage.”
He smiled as if tired, but his eyes were locked on the women. His hand slowly lifted, and his fingertips slid across the bloody bandage on his thigh. A sprinkling of blue light surrounded his wound and quickly dissipated. The dried blood was no longer on the bandage. He gently peeled it off and tossed it aside. Not even a sign of where the arrow had penetrated remained. I scooted away from him, as scared as I’d ever been.
Stata’s image fell away. He stood on two uninjured legs, drawing the attention of all. His nose grew wider, his skin lighter, his hair turned the shade of Elizabeth’s—and most of those people from Dire. He took a single step closer to my sister and Elizabeth and said in a strong, clear, unaccented voice, “Which is her?”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
We watched Stata in fear, wonder, confusion, and a hundred other descriptions. He had accused either Elizabeth or Kendra of being something called the Dragon Queen. His conviction and hate were complete. He had morphed from the appearance of people from Kondor to Dire, his voice lost the weakness it had held, and he now seemed in charge of us in some manner instead of the other way around.
“Who are you?” Elizabeth asked in a hushed tone.
He raised both arms, hands high above his head, fingers extended, a foul expression threatening us. Hints of blue twinkled at the end of each finger. His face of rage told us he was about to do something, but not what. I was slightly behind him, and to one side, still squatted on the ground and couldn’t rise in time to prevent his actions. Both women were sitting. None of us could possibly move before he did whatever was coming.
However, it didn’t happen, at least not what Stata intended. Instead, there was a sound similar to that when I gave Alexis a good-natured slap on her rump. We saw the butt of a knife protrude from Stata’s chest, and his face morphed again, to one of shock and pain, and it resembled neither Kondor or Dire, but something else.
His hands grasped at the hilt of the knife as his knees crumpled. His mouth opened to scream but no sound emerged before he fell forward on his face. Dead.
Nobody moved.
Tater said, “Lucky it wasn’t my throwing arm that was broke.”
Elizabeth looked at me. “Why didn’t you do something?”
I understood her question. What she was asking was why hadn’t I used magic to stop Stata? The simple truth was that it was so ingrained in me to only use magic at rare times, and always in subtle ways, I hadn’t thought of it. It might not even have worked.
We all moved to examine the husk of a body that had been Stata. He no longer resembled those from Dire, nor from anywhere else. His skin had shrunk as if he had lain in the desert sun in the brown lands for days. Upon further inspection of him, all accomplished without any of us touching him, his bones seemed to have dissolved. What lay on the ground was wrinkled skin and clothing.
“Magic,” Tater hissed.
Kendra turned her face away and gagged.
Elizabeth scowled. “A mage did this.”
“Killed him?” I asked, wondering if Tater intended to retrieve his knife.
“No,” she snapped. “I’ve heard some mages can present themselves as people using a high-level spell called reincarnation. They enter the body of someone long dead and use it from afar to look and act human.”
“Never heard of that,” I told her through a whisper of fear.
She continued speaking as if she’d never stopped, “The mage must be present in the body at all times but cannot cheat death. Tater’s knife caused the mage to withdraw or die with the body. I’m sure only the body died. The mage is still out there. Somewhere.”
Her explanation chilled me even more. “Do you mean a mage has been wearing the body of Stata like some old clothes?”
“Yes,” her answer allowed for no other account.
Tater stepped forward and knelt but didn’t touch. “Looks old. She might be right. Anybody got a knife they can lend me?”
That answered the question of the knife, and I’d see he received a better one. “Then, where is the mage?”
Elizabeth shrugged.
I persisted, “Did the mage have to stay with the body all the time? If so, what about sleep? And why was he with those men from Kondor on the mountain?”
She said, “I think, but do not know for sure because I’ve only heard of this spell in hints, it can be maintained while sleeping. But when awake, the mage must accompany the dead, or it fades to what we see before us.”
“That’s so much work!” I said.
Tater shook his head and spat near my foot. “Would you rather be up here on this mountain freezing and starving, or in some warm room sipping soup and watching here through Stata’s eyes?”
“He’s right,” Elizabeth said, “and there is more to learn here. In the end, he looked different than Dire and has an accent. A corpse remembers no language.”
“He’s from far away,” Tater said. “For me, I might kill the next person who talks in the funny way he did, just to be sure.”
“I cannot believe he’s been up here for months,” I said.
“Who says he has been?” Tater asked, ending that line of thought. “For all we know, he might have just got here.”
Kendra turned, took one more quick look, and said, “If we leave now we can be at the store by daybreak. Please.”
We could hear the animals tearing apart the dead at the road, a sure thing to keep me awake. Besides, I’d never be able to sleep with the flat mass at our feet of what had once been a man. And I was not going to attempt moving it. “That sounds good to me.”