The Last Dragon: Book Three

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

Princess Elizabeth

We sat at the campfire in a circle facing each other, but all eyes were on me, their princess as if I could solve the problem of the Young Mage. Damon looked both scared and angry. Anna watched him too, but so did the fake Emma, so all eyes were not on me after all, but they all waited patiently to hear my next words. What were we going to do, they wanted to know? How could I tell them anything of value with the apparition sitting directly in front of me, listening?

Anna edged closer to Damon, her eyes nearly glazed with fear.

Flier said, “What’s happening?”

His attention had also turned to Damon, and the Slave-Master did too. Instead of waiting for my decision, they all looked at him. I shifted to look his way.

Damon looked at none of us. He looked at the thing we called Emma with unwavering concentration. Hate filled his face. He pointed at it and said, “You need to explain.”

The image of Emma spat, her eyes focused as hard on Damon as his were on her.

Damon said, “It does not have to be this way.”

“You don’t know anything,” the false-Emma shouted.

“I know a few things. One is that you’re scared, maybe for the first time in your existence. You want to stop us from reaching Kaon. That is your goal.”

“I just want to kill you.”

Damon didn’t flinch at the venom in the words. Instead, he moved a step closer and said, “Before you can do that, Kendra will call on her dragon and send it your way. It will find you. It has been searching for you this whole time.”

There was a long pause. Then the voice of Emma said, “How did you figure that out?”

“I didn’t, but you’re not scared of anyone here, yet you traveled with us and tried to prevent us from reaching here. You tried to stop us from leaving Trager, and then at Vin, you had the army trying to stop us, but you were a little too late. So, they attacked us after we left Vin and then again when we were closer to Dagger.”

“Why?” Kendra asked in a whisper.

Damon continued, “You tried to stop us and then when that didn’t work, you tried to get us to go anywhere but to Kaon. You even had us captured to be sold in Kaon, but we would never have lived that long to reach the auctions. You had Princess Elizabeth taken to Dagger, so we would follow her there and try to rescue her.”

The thing that was Emma shimmered as if losing power and it said, “We can make a deal. I’ll let all of you go free. Go back to Dire where you belong.”

“No deals,” Damon snapped.

How he managed to speak for all of us without consulting us was a mystery to me. For me, at that time, going home seemed a deal worth considering. He had taken charge and acted as I would have wanted—or wanted myself to act. He never asked permission, he simply did what was right and we allowed him to continue. He moved another step closer and waited.

Damon said, “You’re made of smoke and imagination. You can’t hurt us.”

Emma threw back her head and laughed so long and hard it changed from laughter to a continuous screech. I wanted to cover my ears. Then it ceased as quickly as it began. “You’re right and wrong.”

“Don’t play with words,” Damon said.

“There are other ways to hurt you. Flier, it was so convenient of you to tell me where your family is on that farm beside the sea. Yesterday I sent a small Vin army to gather them and bring them to Kaon. And Princess, the servant for the Heir Apparent is being held near here, a knife at his throat by one of my trusted associates.”

Damon said, “Kendra direct your dragon to Kaon. Do it now.”

The image of Emma smiled. “I watched two small boys playing this game one time. Each threw a knife near the other’s feet, daring him to flinch.”

“And?” Damon asked when Emma quit talking.

“One boy got a nasty knife wound in his toe.”

I hated to admit it to myself, but Emma was right. Both of us had made their threats, and one would flinch, or be hurt. There seemed no way out.

However, the entire conversation had the “feel” of two boys roughhousing. Perhaps the story the Young Mage had told about the boys with the knife shifted my thinking in that direction. No matter the reason, my impression was that the Young Mage was properly named. The thought of a mage under the age of twenty with special magical powers filled me with fear.

Boys that age are often filled with hormones that rage through their bodies. They will listen to no one, do as they think, and fear nothing. They rail against any who disagree.

My father has set an age limit on recruits for the Royal Army of Dire, as had almost all armies, he said as he leaned closer as if to reveal one of the great secrets of the world. “Those under twenty-three or four will accept orders to charge right into the face of a superior force, believing they will survive because they are immortal. They cannot be hurt. However, those over twenty-five will stop and think. They’ll tell their captains and lieutenants, ‘Hey, let’s think about this.’”

My father was right. All wars are fought by young men and boys, never by those old enough to fear death. Those older had achieved enough rank to be trainers or to order others to attack while they observed.

In short, wise men, especially wise old men, avoided conflicts. The Young Mage was forcing a conflict. Damon was a little too eager to fight, and while he understood how to push back against the Young Mage, he didn’t know how to be ruthless enough to win.

Knowing two key things could tip the balance in a battle. We knew three. The Young Mage was probably no older than twenty, he was scared of the dragon, and he hadn’t yet faced his mortality. Those three things could be used against him—but Damon had pushed too far.

The Slave-Master said to Emma, “I doubt I could get ten silver coins for you on the auction blocks.”

“I know what you’re trying to do,” the Young Mage said with a measure of heat and anger.

The Slave-Master chuckled, which was an ugly sound.

“You think this is funny?”

“I do,” the Slave-Master admitted. “You believe we are so stupid we came here unprepared and knowing nothing. You overheard some things that we intended you to hear, and not others. Those are what you should worry about.”

“Like what?” the irritation in the boy was evident, as was that the Slave-Master was prodding him like a herdsman directing his cows to pasture.

“Like you know that Damon can speak with his mind to Anna. He once tried it with you, and it didn’t work, but if I was you, I’d ask myself who else he has been mind-speaking with? Who else knows all he knows?”

There was an uncomfortable pause before the Young Mage asked, “What else?”

“Well, you might ask how that might harm you, or how Kendra is sitting there composed while directing her dragon to do who knows what? It has already destroyed two cities, what’s another? Especially if you’re in it.”

“What if I’m not?”

“Well, that is a little better, if you ask me, but not much. Once the city burns, everyone will leave, including farmers. Where will your food come from? And if you go into public, who is waiting to put an arrow or knife in you once word of what you’ve done leaks. Of course, we’ll see to that. We will tell everyone in five kingdoms who you are and what you’ve done. That way, if we don’t kill you, someone else will.”

“You don’t know anything.”

The Slave-Master said, “I do know this. The more you talk with us, the easier the dragon can find you, and you won’t even know it’s coming because you’re too busy making an image of a little girl for us to watch.”

Emma winked out of existence.