Dragon Quest Read online

  Elle didn’t turn around. “They’re still out there. They’re up on the ridge waiting for us.”

  Carmen sat down on the window seat in front of her. “I know. The sentries saw their fires. They’re camped up there. I suppose they’ll be making another assault in the morning.”

  “We can’t defeat them. They’ll keep attacking until they destroy us.”

  Carmen paused. Then she stood up. “You should get something to eat. Then we can go downstairs. Angus and Robbie and the others are holding a council of war to decide what to do.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  Carmen sighed and sat back down. “I’m really happy to see you. I didn’t think I would ever see you again.”

  Elle couldn’t hold herself together any longer. Her shoulders slumped, and she closed her eyes. “I’m really happy to see you, too.”

  “Really?” Carmen asked. “You don’t seem very happy about it. You haven’t looked at me once since you got here.”

  Elle’s eyes snapped to Carmen’s face. She never actually thought of Carmen as a friend, but now they were alone together in this strange world. They had no one else but each other. “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. I guess I’m just exhausted, and I’m really sorry Rob tried to kill Angus. We…we didn’t know…”

  Carmen laughed. “I’m not sorry. Do you know how happy we all are to get Robbie back? We thought he was dead. I…” She touched her finger to the corner of her eye. “I couldn’t live with myself. I blamed myself for him falling into that sinkhole, and I know Angus blamed himself, too. We couldn’t pull him back.”

  “You shouldn’t blame yourself,” Elle replied. “You did the best you could under the circumstances. I just don’t understand how you can still be here. The curse is lifted, so you should have been sent back. We both should have.”

  “I know, but we weren’t. I’m just glad to still be here. I don’t know what I would have done if I had been sent back. This is where I belong. I want to stay here.”

  Elle stared at her. “You do?”

  “Of course. I love Angus more than anything. I never want to leave. Now, Hazel, on the other hand, she might be a different story.”

  “Hazel?” Elle asked. “What about Hazel? Is she here?”

  “She’s here. She’s been here all along. She says she doesn’t want to go back, but she’s not happy here, either. She doesn’t really know how to deal with the Urlus. She can’t stand them in their dragon form, and she can’t relate to them in their human form when she knows they’re really dragons. She only ever talks to me and Ewan because we’re human. Ewan is Angus’s best friend. Do you know all this already? Tell me to shut up if you do.”

  “I don’t know anything about it. Rob and I have been so busy getting here we never really talked about the details. He said I didn’t really need to know all that, and I guess he was right.”

  Carmen put her head to one side. “You and Robbie—you’re….”

  Elle fiddled with her fingernails and nodded. “Yeah.”

  Carmen squeezed her arm. “I’m so happy for you. He’s a great guy, and Angus adores him. All of them do.”

  Elle stole a glance at her. “I’m not sure I’m happy about it. I mean, how can I be with him when I could get sent back at any second? I don’t want to love him if we can never be together.”

  “That’s the way I used to feel, but I don’t feel that way anymore. I’m happy for every day with Angus. If I get sent back, it’s all that more important I cherish the time I have with him. I don’t want to waste a single day.”

  “I feel the same way,” Elle replied, “but still, how can you really give yourself to him when you’re not an Urlu?”

  “I am an Urlu,” Carmen declared. “I’m as Urlu as the rest of them. Ask Ewan. He feels the same way. We can’t change into dragons, but we’re still Urlu. This is our country, and we’ll defend it with our lives. Ewan is Angus’s Captain of the Guard. He organizes all the defenses. He’s down with the troops right now seeing that everybody gets the medical care they need.”

  Elle peeked at Carmen’s glowing face. She never saw Carmen so happy before. This hardened cop from the rough side of town finally found her place in the world. “Yeah, but, I mean…don’t you worry about…. You can never give Angus an heir. You’re two different species. Won’t it cause problems when it comes to someone taking over the Throne?”

  “Is that what you’re worried about?” Carmen asked. “You’re worried you and Robbie will never be able to have children?”

  “You have to admit it’s a problem.”

  Carmen pressed Elle’s hand between both of hers. “It’s not a problem, sweetie. Humans and Urlus are biologically compatible. If you want to stay here to be with Robbie, you can. You can have children with him. You can have everything with him you could ever have with a human man. You could have so much more with him. Believe me.”

  “But how do you know?” Elle asked. “How can you be certain you’re compatible? How do you know that’s not just wishful thinking?”

  “Because,” Carmen replied. “I’m pregnant.”

  Elle gasped out loud. “Really?”

  Carmen’s cheeks glowed. “I just found out. It’s a secret. Nobody knows.”

  Elle stared straight ahead, but she no longer saw Carmen sitting in front of her. This was incredible. She could…. she could what? She could marry Robbie and have children with him? Is that what she really wanted?

  She no longer had to worry about becoming Queen to his King. Could she accept the present moment in all its complications? Could she just enjoy being with him for as long as it lasted, without worrying about the future? That was the real question.

  “Come downstairs,” Carmen urged. “Once you see him, everything will become clear. It always does.”

  “I’m not ready for that,” Elle replied. “I need to sit here a little longer. I need to take all this in.”

  “Do you want me to stay with you?” Carmen asked. “I’ll leave if you want me to.”

  “No, I’d like it better if you stayed. You understand this situation so much better than I do.”

  “Only because I’ve been living it since I showed up here. When I first got here, it was just as confusing for me.”

  “Tell me again how it happened.”

  “We fought the witch,” Carmen replied. “We thought the witch put a curse on the Cameron family, but it turned out Hazel’s spell created the curse in the first place. The witch set the Phoenix Throne on fire and pushed Angus into it. He burned up, and the dragon King rose from the ashes. That’s what the name means.”

  Elle looked out the window at nothing and sighed. “That’s what must have happened to Rob.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He changed. He was drugged and groggy, and he changed in his sleep without realizing it. It must have happened at the same time Angus got the Throne. He said he didn’t know how it happened. He said he never knew before that he could change. It must have happened around the same time Angus got his dragon form.”

  “That’s right,” Carmen exclaimed. “They all got it at the same time. The curse robbed them of their ability to change. After Angus got the Throne, they could all do it. They all had to learn how to change and how to fly and everything.”

  Elle nodded at the window. It all made sense, but she couldn’t get her brain to comprehend it. So many convolutions surrounded their journey. The Munros—or whoever they were—tricked Robbie into attacking his own people. They got him to fight his own brother, to dispossess him of his rightful Throne. Why?

  Carmen patted her hand. “Are you sure you’re okay? I’ve never seen you like this.”

  Elle peered into her face. “It’s all over, you know? Everything I thought I knew about myself—it’s all gone. I built my whole identity on my career, and now it’s gone. There’s nothing more important in the world than…. well, the people in this castle, and now we’re in danger. It’s gonna take me a while to figure it all out
.”

  Carmen stood up. “It’s all right. You’ve got all the time in the world. It took me some time to get used to it, too, but you will. Just let it happen and accept the happiness it can bring you. That’s how I deal with it. I’ll leave you alone. Just try to get something to eat.”

  She turned to go, but Elle called her back. “Wait a second, Carmen. Show me where Hazel’s room is.”

  “You want to see Hazel?”

  “I guess I better. I always sort of took care of her. Maybe she’ll come out of her shell, now that she knows I’m around.”

  The two women set off down the passage. “You’ll do her a world of good,” Carmen told her. “She needs as many friends as she can get. She wears me out sometimes.”

  “In what way?”

  “I’m all she’s got. She depends on me for all her social contact. I take her outside the castle every day, just to get some fresh air. Other than that, she stays in her room. It’s hard having someone depend on you like that to the exclusion of everyone else.”

  “I can understand that,” Elle replied. “We should see if there’s any way we can get her out of her shell a little more. If we’re going to be here for a while, it only makes sense she settles in and gets used to it.”

  Carmen stopped in front of a door. “This is her room.”

  “Are you coming in?” Elle asked.

  “I better not. I would only get in your way. You talk to her. See if you can get any sense into her head. Maybe if she understands about you and Robbie, she’ll change her attitude toward the Urlus.”

  “We can only hope.”

  “I’ll see you downstairs,” Carmen told her, and started to turn away.

  Elle raised her hand, but she hesitated to knock. Instead, she pressed the door latch and swung the door open. Whatever she was expecting to find in that room, what she found couldn’t have surprised her more.

  She beheld Hazel Green in a long gown with her red hair tied back behind her neck. Hazel knelt on the floor next to her bed with a curious collection of articles spread out in a circle around her. A bound-up stick of dried sage smoldered in a dish. A bowl of clear fluid sat at her side, and a bunch of homemade Tarot cards formed a star pattern around her.

  Hazel swayed back and forth. Her arms waved from side to side, and she chanted something under her breath. Elle didn’t have time to register what Hazel was saying before a blinding flash hit her in the face. A shock wave of air knocked her back.

  Elle stumbled into Carmen standing right behind her. Both women rushed into the room at the same moment, but they both halted on the threshold when they saw a hole open in space in front of Hazel’s face. Elle drew back in horror as the hole widened. In front of her shocked eyes, a crowd of the ghouls flooded into the room and flew in Hazel’s face.

  The howling hollow skeleton of a woman in a flowing ghostly dress extended her claws at Hazel. An old man with a grizzled beard gaped his empty mouth. The pits of his eye sockets stretched and distorted when he moved.

  Hazel staggered back screaming. The ghouls floated around the room, and the hole closed behind them. They bobbed every which way in search of something. Elle, Carmen, and Hazel stared at them, not knowing what to do.

  The ghouls made several little rushes toward the walls, the bed, and even the doorway where the women watched. The ghouls circled the room until they found the window. They rushed it once, drew back, and gathered in a tighter bunch. They made one more concerted rush, shattered the glass, and flowed out into the freezing night outside.

  Chapter 29

  “There mun’ be some way tae ficht them,” Angus began. “They’re no immortal.”

  “We dinnae ken that,” Robbie countered. “They may be, and if they are, we’re sunk.”

  “One thing’s sure,” Ewan added. “We cinnae stay inside this castle forever. We mun’ get out tae get food and tend our flocks.”

  “They’ll no leave us tae hide in here, anyway,” Robbie replied. “They’ll attack, the same way they did yesterday. They’ll start their bombardment, and once they break down the castle, whate’er holds ‘em outside winnae hold ‘em any lainger. They’ll rush in, and that’ll be the end.”

  “Ye ken ‘em better than we,” Angus told him. “What can ye tell us aboot ‘em?”

  “I cinnae tell ye naught aboot ‘em,” Robbie replied. “I dinnae kenned what they were. I thought they were regular people—nice ones.” He snorted. “Ye ken as much as I aboot ‘em. I ne’er woulda come wi’ ‘em if I’da kenned what they were.”

  Angus slapped him on the shoulder. “I’d raither face a thousand ghouls wi’ ye ‘ere than ought else. Ye’re here. That’s all I care aboot.”

  Robbie looked around the circle of familiar faces. His brother Callum sniffed back tears, and Fergus and Jamie stared at him in wonder. He never really let himself believe he would see them again, and they clearly never expected to see him alive and healthy the way he was when he disappeared.

  “One thing I can tell ye.” Robbie turned to Ewan. “They’re usin’ the name Munro.”

  Ewan started. “What?”

  “I kenned they were no Munros. I just ne’er reckoned on ‘em bein’ so far from that.”

  “They mun’ ha’e counted on the name o’ a real Clan tae convince me. I suppose it worked summat.”

  “Ne’er ye mind that,” Angus broke in. “The matter remains, they’re out there on our southern boundary, and we’ve got ‘til mornin’ tae find a way tae defeat ‘em.”

  “They cinnae defeat ye, Angus,” Robbie returned. “They cinnae tak’ the Throne from ye by force. They wouldnae cooked up this elaborate plot if they coulda. They needed me tae ficht ye and defeat ye. They planned this whole invasion as a pretext tae get ye out o’ yer castle where I would ficht ye one on one. That’s the only way they could tak’ the Throne.”

  “We dinnae ken it’s the Throne they’re after,” Ewan added. “Perhaps they wisht tae destroy the Throne and tak’ the country. They may ha’e any number o’ motives. They’re summat beyond human, beyond anythin’ we can understand. We dinnae ken why they’re ‘ere or why they’re attackin’ us.”

  Before anyone could reply, a ruckus of screaming and shouting echoed outside the hall where the men stood in conference. The door burst open, and Elle charged into the room. Her fist clenched around the sleeve of a tall, red-haired woman. Elle dragged her kicking and screaming into the hall and flung her at the men.

  Carmen followed behind. She regarded the whole scene with her usual calm. Angus whirled around to face them. “What’s the meanin’ o’ this?”

  Elle aimed an accusing finger at the woman. “She was casting another spell. She opened a portal and let a bunch of those ghouls into the castle. It’s only the magic that protects the castle that stopped them attacking us, and they flew out the window.”

  Robbie and Ewan spun around to face the strange woman. “What?”

  “I didn’t do anything!” the woman screeched. “I just wanted to go home! That’s all. I didn’t know they would….”

  “When are you gonna wake up and smell the coffee, Hazel?” Elle shot back. “You could have made the curse stronger. You could have created a new curse all over again. What’s the matter with you?”

  “I didn’t know!” Hazel shrieked. “I just couldn’t stand it anymore. I had to get out of here. I thought I could….”

  Angus rolled his eyes and turned away. “Wheesht! There’s no sense in her.”

  “We ought tae kill her,” Ewan snarled. “We ought tae be rid o’ her once and for all.”

  “I’m wi’ ye,” Jamie chimed in. “She’s been a curse on us from the start. She’ll only put us in more danger. We ought tae put her down here and now. It’s the ainly way tae protect ourselves from her.”

  “No!” Hazel screamed. “I didn’t mean any harm. I didn’t know those things would come through. I swear I didn’t.”

  “What did you think would happen?” Elle demanded. “They’re camped up on the rid
ge waiting to slaughter us all, and you had to go and give them an opening. I didn’t think even you could be that stupid.”

  Hazel gasped, and her hand flew to her heart, stricken. Even Carmen’s eyes popped. Angus spoke up. “Tak’ it easy, all o’ ye. If the things went out through the windae, then there’s no harm done as yet. So far, the castle still protects us, e’en if the things do come through. Now afore we go any further, we allus need tae calm down and think o’ a way tae defeat these things. If we set up attackin’ each other, we dinnae stand a chance. And as far as killin’ ‘azel, I forbid it under the most strenuous circumstances. We all ken she couldnae cast a spell tae save her life, and I ken attest.”

  Hazel’s head snapped around to stare at him, but he only smiled at her. Ewan smacked his lips in annoyance but said nothing. No one said anything.

  Carmen broke the silence. “I’ve been thinking.”

  “Tell us what ye’ve been thinkin’, lass,” Angus replied. “Any idea’s better than none.”

  “If those things came through the same portal of the spell, maybe they’re part of the curse.”

  Everybody turned around to look at her. “The curse?”

  “It was something you said, Elle, that made me think of it,” Carmen went on. “If the three of us are still here, it must mean the curse is still in place. If they came through the portal when Hazel cast the spell, there must be a way to send them back through it using the same spell. If we break the curse, we’ll send them back where they came from.”

  “If we did that,” Elle pointed out, “then we would get sent back where we came, too.”

  Everyone in the room looked at each other. Robbie’s eyes met Elle’s. Send her back? He couldn’t do that. Then again, if he didn’t send her back, they would all die. He glanced at Angus and found his brother looking at Carmen. They all thought the same thing. None of them wanted to break the curse. They wanted to stay together.

  “Anyway,” Elle added, “it’s not gonna happen ‘cuz we can’t cast the spell. She just tried, and they came through it. If we tried again, they would all come through and overrun us. We would be wiped out.”