Chapter 7: Desperate Times

Mistress Giry was one of the town's best healers. She had a passion for healing, for the art and not just the necessity. She knew all manner of advanced cantrips and spells for healing even the most severe and baffling illnesses. Many thought this was because her daughter had died many years earlier after assisting in a birth, along with her mentor, another healer and midwife. She had done everything within her power to keep the both of them alive, but had failed. Whatever had infected them was irreversible and deadly.

It was with this knowledge in mind that Philippe rushed Ciara to Giry's residence, which consisted mostly of spare rooms and medical suites, a miniature hospital in its own right. She was bare, he knew, but her life was in danger. What was a bit of embarrassment if she survived? The people walking the streets in daily life jumped aside for the cart and stared after the spectacle. A few shouted curses at him, and a few others wondered why he was taking a cadaver somewhere at breakneck speed. Ciara, of course, was not a cadaver, but she indeed looked like one, in her half-dead, pale colors.

The sprint had left the carthorse foaming at the mouth and panting heavily. Obviously he was not used to such strenuous runs through town. Philippe jumped from his seat and unloaded Ciara from the cart. He cursed when he found her skin ice-cold, and held her close to keep her as warm as possible. Her head lolled back weakly, white hair wispy and light on the breeze.

He checked her pulse at her neck. There was a beat- faint, but still there.

Mistress Giry had just finished sweeping her porch when a flushed Master de Chagny and a stark naked woman arrived on her yard. She raised an eyebrow. She had seen just about every crazy and unseemly incident since over fifty years past, but this still looked a bit odd, to say the least. She had learned not to talk or ask questions, just heal.

A quick look over the bare, fainted woman told her much, but not enough. She was bruised all over, but not bleeding. Perhaps she had been severely beaten.

"Please, help her!" Philippe's mouth dropped open in indignation when the mistress turned her back and walked into her large house. It closed again when the lady turned on her heel and peered at him through shrewd eyes.

"Well? Get her inside, or you'll have no service from me."

He did so, and Giry led him down a dim hallway into one of her neatly arranged spare rooms. "I can see the magic nearly dripping off of her- in fact, it is taking up most of her body right now. Care to inform me of what exactly happened?"

He hesitated at the door of the room. Should he reveal this confidential information to someone he had just barely met and only knew by reputation? "You swear not to tell anyone?"

"That is for me to decide. Aside from that, I think it hardly matters, since your ride through town is surely already spawning devilish rumors." He grimaced. If he did not tell her, Ciara might die. He had to. She had to understand when- if- she lived through this.

"She is half Dark. Her Dark father attacked me, and when she defended me, he attacked her instead. She fainted, woke up, and was ill like this." He paused. "Wait- you can see magic?"

She did not answer his question, but pulled aside the sterile sheets of the small cot and motioned for him to put Ciara down. He obeyed. She did not seem like a woman to be crossed.

"Magic poisoning. I have treated this before, but nothing so serious. The fact that she is half Dark complicates things. I cannot treat her as I would a human who encountered a Dark."

"What do you mean?" he asked, jaw tense with worry. The lines on his forehead were beginning to show.

"If I treat her as I would a full human, with the cleansing spells and potions, half of her will die. And, if half of her will die, the whole of her will soon follow."

"You cannot do anything?" His worry turned to desperation. There had to be some way to revive Ciara…

"I never said that. I can stabilize her condition temporarily, freeze her, if you will, but it will be extremely uncomfortable, and this is not a permanent healing solution." She opened a drawer in the bedside stand and pulled out a vial of ice-blue liquid that reminded him of Ciara's eyes. Oh, what he would give to see them open and conscious again!

He grabbed for the bottle, but it was quickly yanked out of his reach. "Pay, young sir. The ingredients in this are extremely expensive and very rare."

Trembling fingers scrambled for the small sack of gold in his pocket. "No, not with money. To ensure my trust in you, give me something that shows you care enough for this young woman- something precious. I will not be the link in a chain of harm."

"But I have nothing! You drive a hard deal, Mistress Giry." He gritted his teeth in frustration. Her eyes showed nothing but determination and concern for her patient. He had to have something…

He searched his pockets and paused as the pads of his fingers brushed against a handkerchief. It was bread from his breakfast that morning- bread that Ciara had made. He had been too busy to eat it, and had tucked it away to eat at noon. Now it was the only thing he had to pay this strange healer woman.

Mistress Giry saw his pause as he found something. "That will do, young man. Give it here." She held out her hand with the vial dangling from between her fingers.

"It is but a scrap of bread from my morning meal, surely-"

"The way you defend it, whatever it is, shows to me that it is precious. Something to do with her, perhaps?" she suggested, glancing at the prone form on the bed.

"Very well." He was about to place the bundle in her hand and take the potion when he realized something. "How will she be healed, then, if you have only this…preservative?"

"Bread first, young master, then the cure." Reluctantly, he placed the scrap of food into her waiting palm. She, in turn, handed him the little vial. "Give it to her."

He tried to keep his hands from shaking as he opened the bottle and pressed the rim to Ciara's lips. The liquid flowed out of its own accord, into her ears, nose, eyes, and mouth, glowing with energy.

"Now, the cure?" She smiled a secretive smile.

"I am sending you to a friend of mine. His name is Erik."

…

Christine felt up along her spine for the hundredth time since her bones had begun to grow. The skin had peeled away, and beneath was a beaded, slightly rough texture she felt sure was the beginnings of scales. She felt that now was not the right time to ask him what color she was turning. He had begun to speak, but had only just begun to tell about his hatching.

I did not know what they would do to me. The crate was my world. She rested her side against his foreleg and pulled the hide he had procured for her tighter around her shoulders.

"Where were you?"

I was born in slavery, in the southern deserts.

Her gasp was audible, but she covered her mouth and pressed her cheek to his leg for comfort.

It was all I ever knew. The dragons around me were smaller, duller, and did not think as you and I do. They were bred to be dumb beasts, used for work, warfare, and even…pets. If his strange inner voice could have spit distastefully, Christine imagined it would have on the reference to domestication. Such humiliation could not have been easy to bear. All the dragons in the south are dumb as horses and oxen. I was the freakishly intelligent one, the one that knew fairness and thought about freedom. The only language I knew was the one of command and punishment. Humans are cruel, Christine. I hope that you never experience such abuse.

"Is that where you got your scars? Penned up in a desert somewhere?" Her voice trembled.

A rumble escaped his chest with some unnamable emotion. A group of spice and gold traders bought me, and I had to go with them, being small- only about ten years old, unable to do much more than puff smoke, with bound claws- Here he flexed his forepaws as if to prove that humans had not defeated him. Faint scratches in the texture of his knuckles showed what had once been serious abrasions. Christine could just make out the lines on his face where a tight muzzle had been.

They kept me as entertainment for the children, a harmless fright for them to poke at and laugh. And then…those children grew, and I did as well. He peered down at her. Dragons mature differently. When the children were grown, I was big enough to pull carts and light fires. So I did, under the threat of a barbed whip or pierced and weighted wings.

"What do you mean? What is piercing and weighting?" She was almost afraid to ask, and an idea was already forming in her mind.

Wing membranes are relatively easy to pierce. In that barbaric land, some humans burn through it and loop heavy irons and chains in the holes when we are young and helpless. As a dumb beast, you would not know what you lost. You cannot fly in such a state, and the wings go weak and dead from disuse. It is easier to pierce when they are young, but for me, an older specimen, it would be agony to lose my wings. And, if the holes were not cauterized, the skin would grow back around the metal, causing infection, metal poisoning, and the impossibility of removing the weights.

Christine was crying again. Erik nudged her gently. It was unnerving, having someone crying over him and his upbringing, but twistedly pleasant. It showed that she genuinely cared for him.

While I value your regard, you should not cry for me. Her shoulders only shook more, and she furiously scrubbed at her cheeks to try and stem the tide. Dragon tears were rare, but much larger than human tears. She supposed it was because dragons did not cry often.

"But your story is sad, and…tragic, even!"

You may change your mind when you have heard more, he answered with a deep sigh.

"I will not!" she pouted between hiccups. "Your life is enough to make me weep and enough to make me wish to kill those traders!"

I am afraid that is not possible, Christine. I already did.

The silence was enough to make Erik's tail twitch impatiently. Would this new piece of information send her running from him like a frightened doe? His fears were dissolved by her next comment.

"The cruel bastards deserved it," she grumbled, still sniffling. "Abuse of animals is bad enough, but slavery and torture for sentient beings with souls, hearts, and thinking minds is truly evil."

Then does it satisfy you to hear that their bodies are burned to ash and their heads spiked on branches for the vultures? he wondered, tapping a claw against the stone. The sunlight warmed him, and his eyes drifted across the horizon or rolling hills, wide deltas to the sea, and grassland.

"It does, it does indeed," Christine replied vehemently.

Then, according to your definition of cruelty, I should have been executed long ago. This startled her.

"You have- have tortured?" was all she could stammer. It was a blow to her heart that this person, Erik, her friend, could have committed the same bloody, accursed crimes that he had endured.

I did, he hissed with a white cloud of smoke. Dragons from the near east lands found me, looking for a soldier. They were the first intelligent ones of my kind I ever met, and to speak with them and be one of them was intoxicating. I did everything with them. For you see, Christine, dragons of the east have a somewhat symbiotic way of life with humans. They work for human military and cultural pursuits in exchange for comfortable living among humans and the freedom to pursue what arts and amusements they may. It is a good system until one considers that they do the grisly and terrifying work that humans do not for the sake of morals.

Another silence gathered about them as Christine considered this.

"Does this mean that dragons and humans are friends there, eat together, inhabit the same public places, and merge cultures? If so, I wish to visit such a place when I am fully transformed."

Erik stared at her incredulously. Is that all you understood from what I just now said?

…

Raoul had asked the librarian where the books on families and names were, but he had not known, because the books were new and unorganized. Some had been donated by the townspeople, and others had just recently been written. None had been sorted except by alphabetical order.

The library was a quiet place, because much of the populace was not literate, and if they were, they knew just enough to get by. There was little need to read, for Philippe's inventions carried packages from the mail office through the town automatically, without the need for a carrier.

Many such inventions whirred about, crawling through the shelves like spiders to straighten the books that were already on their shelves. The ones that needed sorting had been tagged. When a tag interfered with the tidying, the little metallic creatures would yank them from the shelves and continue. They were prototypes, of course, and required more enchantments to make them intelligent and more specific. Still, with constant business and requests from the citizens, Philippe had not had the time to improve upon his designs.

This was why, when Raoul entered the aisle labeled 'D,' a book crashed down from the top level and hit him on the shoulder. It hurt. He yelped and snatched the book before it reached the floor. He quickly looked at the title: The History of the Monks of the Northeastern Lands. Then he snorted, briefly annoyed that monks felt the need to write so much and create heavy books.

Useless, he thought, and moved on. As he scanned the titles, books around him fell to the floor. Infection and Illness and other tomes toppled from their levels to join the unsorted books on the ground. A Treatise on the Development of the Sword, The Way of Enlightenment, The-

"Ow!" He rubbed his head and glanced at the little metal creature that had tossed it down at him. He could have sworn it was laughing at him. Then, in a fit of irritation, he picked up the book and shoved it back onto a nearby ledge.

Not a second later, another little mechanized secretary pushed it off and onto his foot. He hissed and picked up the volume again, and read the title: Records of the Eastern Military- Human, Dragon, and Otherwise.

Hmm… Perhaps he could just let the insulting behavior of Philippe's machines go and relax by reading a book. He had always loved military stories, and had read many of them as an adolescent. His fingers itched to flip through and let his mind travel to distant places.

Well, that is what a library is for, is it not?

…

Nadir glided through the air, enjoying the sunshine as it warmed his scales. He liked to think he was a twisting beam of light in the sky, much like the auroras he had seen in his infrequent travels to the north. The cold did not suit him, but it was well worth it for the light shows at night. His eyes were open, scanning the ground for a meal. He did not hunt as his friend Erik did, by killing and tearing open game animals. He was quite the devoted vegetarian, simply because meat had never appealed to him. The smell of blood was too coarse for his sensitive nose.

It reminded him of the wars and horrendous massacres he had seen of all the sentient races. His homeland, with its numerous nobles and powers all struggling for the top rung, would probably never be at peace.

He spotted a citrus tree down below and descended, hoping it was not a tree of lemons. Lemons, he preferred salted and preserved, or candied. Sour did not bode well for his digestive system. Once close enough, he plucked one of the fruits and examined it. Bah! Lemons… Ah, I might as well take some with me for later…

He settled on the ground and wrapped his long body around the tree, spearing lemons with the small spines that lifted from his scales. When he pulled himself away again, the poor tree was fruitless, and he was dotted with yellow orbs from neck to tail- and the lemon juice would leave him with a lovely perfume later.

A rattling sound called his attention away from his search for a meal. A cart was making its way through the tall grass at a near-suicidal speed, even though there was no road and the ground was rocky. In its seat was a man, dressed more finely than a peasant, but not so richly that he appeared foreign. He raised his head boldly, coming into the man's sightline. To his surprise, the cart hurtled on, this time in his direction. Is he mad? Why not run away from the large, serpentine dragon instead of towards him?... Well, I am covered in lemons, which do not make for very intimidating ornaments.

Intrigued, Nadir made not move to approach, instead letting the man come to him. When the cart stopped, he sniffed. The load in the back smelled suspiciously of northern cold and magic, even on this sunny day. I have smelled this before, but where?

"Honored sir, I am seeking one named Erik. Do you know him?" Nadir snorted. Did he honestly think he could gain Erik's location just by asking?

I do, but why must I tell you? How do you know of him?

"I need to save a life." Nadir looked into the cart and eyed the bare young woman. Magic pulsed from her in amounts that could not be healthy for a human.

Why should I help you? For all I know, you could be saving the life of a dangerous criminal. What is your name, human?

"I am Philippe de Chagny. The woman whose life I am trying to save is called Ciara," he said, obviously considering the female's identity to be more important than his own.

Well then, Philippe, answer me this that I have asked before: how do you know Erik?

"A healer woman, Mistress Giry sent me. She said to show any dragon this, and I would be granted access." He fiddled with the small bag at his side and pulled out a large, rune-carved chunk of ivory.

Nadir hissed. Mistress, she calls herself? Her proper title is Magister, and that tooth you hold is an artifact she stole from my kind in a cruelly clever bargain.

Philippe paled. Perhaps Giry was an enemy of dragons. In a shaking voice, he declared, "I will give it back to you, but you must take me to Erik."

A tempting offer, human, but Erik may think otherwise and incinerate you.

"No, he shall not. Giry has aught for him as well." The man retrieved a large black scale from the bag. "She tells me she wishes to return this to him and apologize for the inconvenience of sending the outcast women of our village to him every year."

Nadir sighed. Trust Erik to make the strangest friendships with the most unlikely and unsuitable of people. I suppose I must take you to him, then. But do not blame me if he refuses to treat your mate.

Philippe did a double take. "Mate? She's my…" The words died in his throat as Nadir gave him a smug, knowing look. "Very well then, call her what you will, but I will save her life, even at the cost of my own."

The bright, coppery orange of the Persian dragon's scales flashed as he lifted into the air. In his forefeet, he carried the unnaturally white girl and a very sickly green Philippe.

He turned up his nose in disgust as the human male deposited the remains of what little food he'd had onto the grass far below. Humans obviously did not have very great constitution or balance in the air.

They left the cart and the horse far behind, and within a few minutes, they were just outside Erik's caves. Nadir carefully set the girl down on the worn floor before the black dragon could protest. Philippe staggered and turned aside to retch. He had decided it would not be a good idea to vomit inside a fire-breathing reptile's home.

When he was sufficiently recovered, he looked up to see Nadir conversing in hushed tones with Erik.

A woman wrapped in a thick swathe of leather peeked out from behind a stalactite, silver eyes wide. "Philippe? Philippe de Chagny?"